i LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, f 

t -**# . - ,t<7 l 

# L. # 

J UNITED STATES OF- AJVIEllICA.J 



MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 



FOR 



THE TRUTH. 

BY 

WILLIAM S. PLUMEE, D.D. 



Blessed are ye when men shall re-vile you, and persecute you, and 
shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. — Jesus 
Christ. 




PHILADELPHIA : 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 
No. 821 CHESTNUT STREET. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1869, by 

THE TRUSTEES OF THE 

PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Eastern District 
of Pennsylvania. 



Westcott & Thomson, 
Stereotypers, Philada. 



CONTEXTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Strange Things, 5 

II. What Some have Said of Persecution 8 

III. What is Persecution? 11 

IV. For What do Men Persecute each Other? 14 

V. Persecution is Forbidden 18 

VI. Who is a Martyr? 24 

VII. How Many Martyrs have there Been 29 

VIII. The First Five General Persecutions 33 

IX. The Last Five General Persecutions 40 

X. Later Persecutions 45 

XL A Remarkable and Authentic Document 48 

XII. A Reply, with Reflections 54 

XIII. A Modern Martyr 69 

XIV. Romanism in Rome.. 73 

XV. Rome a Persecuting Power 90 

XVI. Louis Montreve], or the Huguenot Martyrs.. 109 

Appendix 171 

3 



MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

FOR THE TRUTH. 



CHAPTER I. 

STHANGE THINGS. 

THE word of God leads us to expect that 
truth and piety will always be opposed 
while there are in the world wicked men. 
The hatred of the ungodly to the friends of 
truth is ever deadly. The first man that 
was born of a woman killed his own brother, 
only because his own works were evil and his 
brother's good. It was malice against those 
who looked for Christ to come into the world 
that made the Egyptians so cruel to the 
Israelites. Saul's malice^ against David was 
very much of this nature. When he wished 
for a tool of his vengeance against the inno- 
cent, he found him. One of his most brutal 
l* 5 



6 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

minions was Doeg, the Edomite. This bloody 
monster, at Saul's bidding, fell upon the 
priests at Nob, and slew on one day four- 
score and five (that is, eighty-five) persons that 
did wear a linen ephod. The good men 
mentioned in the Old Testament were terribly 
hated and hunted. They were tortured, re- 
fusing to save their lives by denying their 
God. They had trial of cruel mockings and 
scourgings — yea, moreover of bonds and im- 
prisonment. They were stoned, they were 
sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with 
the sword ; they wandered in sheepskins and 
goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented. 
They wandered in deserts and mountains, and 
in dens and in caves of the earth. This is 
the true history of many of the people of 
w r hom the world was not worthy. They died 
at the hands of the men for whose salvation 
they prayed. 

Nor did the coming of Jesus Christ put an 
end to deeds of blood against the saints. 
The Lord Jesus himself was put to death in 
the most malignant and shameful manner. 



FOR THE TRUTH. 7 

All his faithful apostles also died by violence, 
except one, and he was saved only by miracle. 
Indeed, our Lord Jesus candidly told his 
disciples that they should be hated of all 
men for his name's sake; and that the time 
should come when those who should kill 
them, would be so filled with rage and blind- 
ness that they should believe they were do- 
ing God service. The apostles no less faith- 
fully warned all who would live godly in 
Christ Jesus that they must suffer persecution. 

Let no one, therefore, be offended at the 
Christian religion because of malice, slander 
and persecution for Christ's sake. The seed 
of the bond woman has always hated the seed 
of the free woman. Holy and fallen angels 
cannot work together, for they are not agreed. 
Neither can men who hate Christ Jesus love 
those who would lay down their lives for the 
Son of God. 

These things are indeed strange. Why 
do men in spirit still cry, Release Barabbas 
and crucify Jesus ? The reason is, that the 
carnal mind is enmity against God. 



MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 



CHAPTER II. 

WHAT SOME JEEJLVE SA1JD OF JPJEKSJECUTION. 

I HA YE thought the young reader might 
be pleased here to see how some great and 
good men have despised the malice and cruel- 
ties of those who sought to frighten them out 
of their avowed love to Christ, and what 
others have said of these things. 

Stephen, the first Christian martyr, dying, 
offered two prayers. One was for himself: 
" Lord Jesus, receive my spirit." The other 
was for his foes : " Lord, lay not this sin to 
their charge." 

Paul said : " The Holy Ghost witnesseth in 
every city, saying that bonds and imprison- 
ments await me. But none of these things 
move me, neither count I my life dear unto 
myself, so that I might finish my course with 

joy." 



FOR THE TFOTTH. 9 

Gregory Nazianzen said : " Do they cast us 
out of the city ? They cannot cast us out of 
that which is in the heavens. If they who 
hate us could do this, they would do some- 
thing real against us. The only thing we 
have really to be afraid of is fearing anything 
more than God." 

To the king of Navarre, Beza said : " Sire, 
it belongs truly to God's Church rather to 
suffer blows than to strike them ; but let it 
be your pleasure to remember that the Church 
is an anvil which hath worn out many a 
hammer." 

Leigh ton said : " The church has sometimes 
been brought to so low and obscure a point 
that if you can follow her in history it is by 
the track of her blood, and if you would see 
her, it is by the light of those fires in which 
her martyrs have been burnt." 

Jortin remarks : " To banish, imprison, 
plunder, starve, hang and burn men for re- 
ligion is not the gospel of Christ, but the 
gospel of the devil. Where persecution be- 
gins, Christianity ends. Christ never used 



10 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

anything like force or violence, except once ; 
and that was to drive bad men out of the 
temple, and not to drive them in." 

Milner says : " Persecution often does in 
this life what the last day will do com- 
pletely — separate the wheat from the tares." 

Spencer says : " Let the Church's enemies 
plough never so deeply, &nd make furrows on 
the backs of God's people never so long ; yet 
God's ends are grace and mercy, and peace to 
do them good in the latter end." 

Bowes says: " If you are made to suffer for 
religion, see that religion do not suffer by 
you." 



FOR THE TRUTH. 11 



CHAPTER III. 

WMAT IS PERSECUTION? 

PERSECUTION is of three kinds : 
1. Mental. A wicked spirit is the root 
of all bitterness. Oat of the heart are the 
issues of life and of death. Every man is 
what he is inwardly. Cain had never hurt a 
hair of Abel's head but that he first conceived 
mortal enmity against him. 1 John iii. 12. 
The Jews never would have clamoured for the 
death of Christ had they indulged no deadly 
malice against him. Matt, xxvii. 18; Mark 
xv. 10. The patriarchs, moved with envy, 
sold Joseph into Egypt. Acts vii. 9. Every 
malignant passion is in its nature persecuting. 
Envy is a fearful incitement to wronging 
others. Yet it is very common. James iv. 
5. And although it torments and even slays 



12 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

its subject (Job v. 2), and is a rottenness in 
the bones (Prov. xiv. 30), yet it is busy in 
all lands and in all hearts where the grace 
of God reigns not. It is the parent of much 
evil. " Where envying and strife is, there is 
confusion and every evil work." James iii. 
16. It is a base passion, often condemned in 
Scripture. Prov. xxiii. 7; Eom. xiii. 13; 
Gal. v. 21. Another form of wickedness 
leading to persecution is bigotry. The very 
ignorance of these hot zealots only makes 
them the more intractable. Watts : " In 
philosophy and religion the bigots of all 
parties are generally the most positive." 
Bigotry is full of spleen and spite. It con- 
stantly tends to violence and cruelty. Bigots 
do every day commit murder in their hearts. 
Some are bigots by nature, others by trade. 
Narrow, contracted views are the foster-pa- 
rents of wrath and wrong. A wrong creed, 
and a creed blindly adopted, often lead to the 
same result. Bigotry is not dead. Perhaps 
it never flourished more than in the nine- 
teenth century. 



FOR THE TKUTH. 13 

2. Persecution is often by the tongue. 
" The words of the wicked are to lie in wait 
for blood." Prov. xii. 6. " The words of a 
talebearer are as wounds." Prov. xviii. 8. 
He who has never felt the power of scornful 
and contumelious language, of irony, sarcasm, 
ridicule, calumny, detraction and evil sur- 
misings, knows not the anguish of good men 
hunted and hounded by the wicked. There 
is " a persecution sharper than the axe. 
There is an iron that goes into the heart 
deeper than the knife. Cruel sneers and sar- 
casm, and pitiless judgments and cold-hearted 
calumnies — these are persecutions." Well 
does Paul put down " cruel mockings" along- 
side of scourgings, bonds, imprisonments and 
death in its most dismal shapes. Heb. xi. 36, 
37. " If God's people were not strangers 
here, the dogs would not bark at them." 
" Woe unto you, when all men shall speak 
well of you ! for so did their fathers to the 
false prophets." Luke vi. 26. " Blessed are 
ye when men -shall revile you, and persecute 
you, and shall say all manner of evil against 

2 



14 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be 
exceeding glad : for great is your reward in 
heaven." Matt. v. 11, 12. 

3. Again, persecution breaks forth into acts 
of cruelty and murder. It arrests, fetters, 
whips, banishes, plunders, confiscates, smites, 
tortures, burns and hangs. It gloats over 
the misery of its victims. Sometimes it 
expresses great compassion for the sufferer, 
but all this is sheer hypocrisy. It is as ma- 
levolent as hell. It riots in carnage. It 
delights in groans. To make its power felt 
is its feast of fat things. 



FOB THE TRUTH. 15 



CHAPTER IV. 

FOB WHAT DO MEN PEKSECTTTE EACH OTHEB ? 

PERSECUTION may be for any cause, or 
without cause. It is commonly on al- 
leged grounds of difference in science or lite- 
rature, politics or religion. The scorn and 
violence of one school of letters toward 
another is sometimes amazing. Persecution 
for difference in science is matter of history. 
The case of Galileo always comes up when 
this subject is named. Whately says : " Galileo; 
probably, weald have escaped persecution if 
his discoveries could have been disproved and 
his reasonings refuted." Political differences 
commonly engender great animosities. A 
party long out of power, at last gaining the 
reins of government, and fearing that their 
tenure of office will be short, commonly stirs 



16 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

up the passions of men to an intense glow of 
heat. Rev. xii. 12. But on no subject is 
passion so violent and prejudice so potent as 
on religious differences. Yet seldom do men 
avowedly persecute others for the real opin- 
ions they hold or the actual usages they prac- 
tice. They often charge something foreign 
from the real ground of animosity. Persecu- 
tors dress their victims in the skins of wild 
beasts before they set the dogs on them. The 
anaconda smears its prey all over before 
swallowing it. 

The prophets predicted that the coming of 
Messiah should engender the spirit of love 
and concord in all who were heartily subject 
to him ; that the mountains should bring 
peace to the people, and the little hills by 
righteousness; that he should break in pieces 
the oppressor ; that he should come down like 
rain upon the mown grass, as showers that 
water the earth ; that under his glorious reign 
the wolf should dwell with the lamb, and the 
leopard should lie down with the kid, and 
the calf and the young lion and the fatling 



FOE THE TRUTH. 17 

together ; and a little child should lead them. 
And the cow and the bear should feed ; their 
young ones should lie down together ; and the 
lion should eat straw like the ox. And the 
sucking child should play on the hole of the 
asp, and the weaned child should put his hand 
on the cockatrice* den. God says that in that 
blessed day they shall not hurt nor destroy 
in all my holy mountain. Ps. lxxii. 3-6 ; 
Isa. xi. 6-8. 

2* 



18 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 



CHAPTER V. 

JPEJRSJECTTTXON IS FOMBIJDDJSJV. 

JESUS CHRIST condemned and forbade a 
fiery, persecuting spirit. When the Samari- 
tans thought that Christ had decided, or was 
about to decide, against them the controversy 
betwixt them and the Jews, they did not re- 
ceive him. " And when his disciples, James and 
John, saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that 
we command fire to come down from heaven to 
consume them ?" Luke ix. 54. These Samar- 
itans were ignorant idolaters, schismatical 
and heretical. John iv. 22. They refused to 
receive the Lord from heaven. Yet Christ 
would not allow his followers even to impre- 
cate judgments on their enemies. Christ says 
the very temper displayed by these disciples 
w 7 as all wrong. He says he came not "to 
destroy men's lives, but to save them." 



FOR THE TKUTH. 19 

Tillotson : " He came to discountenance all 
fierceness and rage and cruelty in men one 
toward another; to restrain and subdue that 
furious and unpeaceable spirit which is so 
troublesome to the world and the cause of so 
many mischiefs and disorders in it; to beget 
a peaceable disposition in men of the most 
distant tempers." So when Peter drew his 
sword, even in defence of Christ's sacred per- 
son, the Master said, " Put up again thy 
sword into his place, for all they that take the 
sword shall perish by the sword." Matt. xxvi. 
52; John xviii. 11. 

The apostles carried out the principles 
inculcated by Christ. They taught, warned, 
rebuked and reproved with all long-suffering 
and doctrine. They called on the early Chris- 
tians to follow peace and holiness ; in meek- 
ness to instruct those that fell into error, that 
they might be recovered from the snares that 
entangled them ; to lay aside all malice and 
guile, and envies, and wrath, and bitterness, 
and evil-speaking ; to be gentle toward all 
men ; to bless and not to curse. 



20 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

That for centuries the early Christians held 
the same views is clear from their writings. 
The primitive Christians carried out the 
teachings of Scripture, opposing all compulsion 
in matters of religion. 

Ignatius says : " Count them enemies and 
separate from them who hate God, but for 
beating or persecuting them, that is proper 
to the heathen, who know not God nor our 
Saviour • clo you not so." 

Speaking of Christians, Origen says : " We 
ought to use the sword against no one." 
Tertullian : " It is no part of religion to com- 
pel religion." The same is taught by Cyprian: 
" The Father has given to the Son what no 
one can claim to himself — to dash in pieces 
with a rod of iron the earthen vessels, or 
become the avenger." Lactantius : " Force 
and injury are not needful, for religion cannot 
be compelled. Torture and piety are exceed- 
ingly diverse; nor can either truth be joined 
with violence or justice with cruelty. For 
religion is to be defended not by killing, but 
by dying ; not by severity, but by patience." 



FOR THE TRUTH. 21 

Bernard : " Faith comes by persuasion, not by 
being thrust upon men. Heretics are to be 
won, not by arms, but by arguments. Attack 
them with the Word, not with the sword." 
Gregory of Rome : " To beat in faith with 
stripes is a new and unheard-of kind of 
preaching." Indeed, Du Pin, who has col- 
lected many like authorities, says, " The 
ancients taught with unanimous consent the 
unlawfulness of compulsion and punishment 
in religion." And Owen says : " The Chris- 
tians of those days disclaimed all thoughts of 
such proceedings." 

Persecution belongs to paganism, infidelity, 
superstition and atheism, not to the temple of 
Jehovah. It was born in malice, superstition 
and devilish cruelty. It has been used a 
thousand times against the truth more than 
against error. "When wielded against heretics 
it has done far more mischief than has ever 
been said of it. Owen says that persecution 
" brought fire and faggot into Christian reli- 
gion, making havoc of the true Church of 
Christ and shedding blood of thousands." 



22 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

Again : " For three hundred years the Church 
had no assistance from any magistrate against 
heretics ; and yet in all that space there was 
not one long-lived, far-spreading heresy, in 
comparison of those that followed." 

Besides the arguments already dropped 
against persecution, Doddridge has at length 
and successfully maintained these proposi- 
tions : 

1. " Persecution for conscience' sake — i.e., 
inflicting penalties on men merely for their 
religious principles or worship-— is plainly 
founded on an absurd supposition that one 
man has a right to judge for another in matters 
of religion." 

2. " Persecution is most evidently inconsist- 
ent with that obvious and fundamental prin- 
ciple of morality that we should do to others 
as we could reasonably desire they should do 
to us." 

3. " Persecution is evidently absurd, and is 
by no means calculated to answer the ends 
which its patrons profess to intend by it." 

4. " Persecution evidently tends to produce 



FOR THE TRUTH. 23 

a great deal of confusion and mischief in the 
world. " 

5. a The Christian religion, which we 
here suppose to be the cause of truth, must, 
humanly speaking, be not only obstructed, but 
destroyed, should persecuting principles uni- 
versally prevail/' 

6. " Persecution is so far from being 
required or encouraged by the gospel, that it 
is most directly contrary to many of its pre- 
cepts, and indeed to the whole genius of it." 

No man can too deeply abhor both the 
spirit and practice of persecution. Nor can 
any one be too much afraid of the guilt of a 
persecutor. Had Saul of Tarsus known what 
he was doing when he was persecuting the 
Church, his damnation would have been as 
certain as it would have been just. 1 Tim. 
i. 13. Compare 1 Thess. ii. 15, 16. 



24 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 



CHAPTER VI. 

WHO IS A MARTYR? 

THE Greek word from which we get our 
word martyr occurs more than thirty 
times in the New Testament, and is commonly 
rendered witness, in the plural witnesses — twice 
record and thrice martyr or martyrs. It is 
applied to judicial witnesses in Matt. xvii. 16 ; 
to one who testifies to the truth of what he 
sees hears or knows, Luke xxiv. 48 ; Acts i. 
8, 22 ; and to one who not only testifies to 
the truth, but lays down his life for the truth, 
Acts xxii. 20 ; Rev. ii. 13 ; xvii. 6. In the 
Scriptures this is the least common meaning 
of the word, but for centuries ecclesiastical 
writers have used it in no other sense. All 
witnesses are not martyrs, but all martyrs 
are witnesses of something. A martyr, then, is 
one who by his death bears witness to the truth 



FOR THE TRUTH. 25 

of his principles and belief. In strictness 
of language, according to South, " To be a 
martyr signifies only to witness the truth of 
Christ; but the witnessing of the truth was 
then so generally attended with persecution 
that martyrdom now signifies not only to 
witness, but to witness by death." Dr. J. 
W. Alexander says : " A witness is called in 
Greek a martyr. We have borrowed the 
word and made it sacred in our tongue." 
Colton says: "He that dies a martyr proves 
that he is not a knave." He gives the high- 
est proof of his sincerity. 

A martyr differs from a confessor only in 
this, that the confessor avows the truth, and 
his love for it, in the face of danger and 
when he expects to die for his confession, but 
in some way his life is spared. A martyr is 
a confessor who actually lays down his life. 
In the primitive Church were many con- 
fessors — " men that had hazarded their lives 
for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ." 
Acts xv. 26. Indeed, in many ages of the 
world it has been worth all a man's earthly 



26 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

possessions, and life itself, unflinchingly to 
avow the simple truth as it is in Jesus. The 
first martyr was Abel. He being dead yet 
speaketh. Heb. xii. 4. That is, every refer- 
ence to his sacrifice and death declares the 
necessity of an atonement for sin ; that if 
sinners would be accepted of God, they must 
come penitently confessing their transgres- 
sions and asking for mercy through the great 
sacrifice of Calvary; that justifying right- 
eousness is by faith — a faith that obeys as 
well as relies ; that a believer's inheritance is 
in a better world ; that we must be willing 
to forfeit the favour and incur the malice of 
even our own kindred, if we would please 
God ; and that the dying testimony of mar- 
tyrs is not useless. Posthumous usefulness 
has marked no class of men more than the 
martyrs. To this day they have been pre- 
eminently serviceable in keeping alive a 
knowledge of the saving truths of Scripture. 
Testimony sealed with blood God has greatly 
owned to the salvation of men. * The blood 
of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." 



FOR THE TRUTH. 27 

The faith and constancy of one sufferer for 
the truth has in one day won hundreds to the 
Redeemer. 

IS EVERY TRUE CHRISTIAN AT HEART A 

MARTYR? If the meaning of this question 
be, whether at all times God's real people are 
in such a frame as that, without warning and 
special preparation, they would universally 
yield up their lives rather than deny Christ, 
we must answer in the negative. Peter, 
Cranmer and others denied Christ and his 
truth. They were found off their guard. 
They were taken by surprise. But if the 
meaning of the question be w T hether, upon fair 
notice and after due consideration, a real child 
of God will yield his life rather than be false 
to his profession and treasonable to Christ, 
the answer must be in the affirmative. So 
Christ has himself determined. Luke xiv. 
26, 27, 33. That man is not to be regarded 
as an established Christian who, upon the 
call of God, is not willing to be found in a 
minority of one against millions. Lot was a 
good man, and, though he dwelt in Sodom, 



28 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

he was not a sodomite, but the surrounding 
wickedness vexed his righteous soul from 
day to day. Noah stood alone in testifying 
against the wickedness of his times. Caleb, 
Joshua and Phinehas wrought righteousness 
and obtained a good report by intrepidly op- 
posing the unbelief and wickedness of the 
great mass of their nation. The truly faith- 
ful stand firm even among the faithless. 
They are not governed by popular suffrage, 
but by the Word of God, which liveth and 
abideth for ever. " I can do no otherwise," 
said Martin Luther, " God help me !" 
The apostles said, " We ought to obey God 
rather than man." 



FOE THE TEUTH. 29 



CHAPTER VII. 

SOW MAJSfT MjLHTYHS SAVE TELEME BE EX? 

IT is impossible to answer this question with 
arithmetical precision. There seems to be 
no reason for seriously doubting that the 
whole number in all ages exceeds fifty mil- 
lions. From the days of Abel there have 
been many outbursts of the bloody spirit of 
persecution. What torrents of righteous blood 
were shed before the deluge we know not. 
One stroke of the pen of inspiration tells all 
we know : " The earth was filled w T ith vio- 
lence." This expression comprehends all 
kinds of murders as well as of martyrdoms. 
If in those times the wicked shed each other's 
blood, it is not credible that the pious escaped 
their malice. So in the history of the Jews 
martyrs abounded. It was not a rhetorical 
figure in Stephen to cry out : " As your 
3* 



30 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

fathers did, so do ye. Which of the prophets 
have not your fathers persecuted ? and they 
have slain them which showed before of the 
coming of the Just One ; of whom ye have 
been now the betrayers and murderers." Acts 
vii. 51, 52. Indeed, of the sufferings of the 
saints, both by Jews and heathen, Paul speaks 
when he says, " that through faith they 
stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the 
violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword ; 
out of weakness were made strong, w T axed 
valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies 
of the aliens. Women received their dead 
raised to life again ; and others were tortured, 
not accepting deliverance, that they might 
obtain a better resurrection ; and others had 
trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, 
moreover of bonds and imprisonments : they 
were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were 
tempted [some read, were branded; some, ivere 
burnt alive; some, were mutilated; and some, 
were impaled or transfixed'], were slain with 
the sword ; they wandered about in sheepskins 
and goatskins ; being destitute, afflicted, tor- 



FOR THE TRUTH. 31 

merited (of whom the world was not worthy) ; 
they wandered in deserts and in mountains, 
and in dens and caves of the earth." Heb. xi. 
33-37. In some respects w r e have not a 
more wonderful history of sufferings for the 
truth than that we find in the books of 
Maccabees and in Josephus, relating to the 
cruelties practiced by Antiochus Epiphanes. 

After the death of Christ, the first martyr 
was Stephen, the history of whose intrepidity, 
loving disposition and glorious death is 
given in Acts vi., vii. Many things respect- 
ing the close of his earthly existence are 
worthy of special note, but they are either 
given in the inspired narrative or are sug- 
gested by the practical commentators on the 
record. 

This was but the beginning of the shedding 
of the blood of saints ; for " at that time there 
was a great persecution against the Church 
which was at Jerusalem ; and they were all 
scattered abroad throughout the regions of 
Judea and. Samaria, except the apostles." 
Acts viii. 1. Stephen's martyrdom is com- 



32 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

monly supposed to have occurred the same year 
as our Lord's ascension to heaven. From 
this time, for near three hundred years, with 
occasional cessations, the blood of the saints 
flowed like water. Besides many persecutions 
confined to villages, cities or provinces, there 
were ten general persecutions against the 
Christians in the Roman empire. 



FOR THE TRUTH. 33 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE JFIKST FIVE GENERAL PERSECUTIONS. 

THE history of these bloody days is indeed 
appalling. The first general persecu- 
tion was under the emperor Claudius Dorni- 
tius Nero, the son of an ambitious woman, 
who said, " Let my son slay me, if he may 
but be emperor." He put on the imperial 
purple and grasped the imperial sceptre 
when young, A. D. 50. At first he seemed 
mild, humane, and even tender-hearted. 
When first called to sign a death-warrant, he 
seemed much moved and expressed the wish 
that he could not write. But he soon became 
licentious, cruel, vindictive and extremely 
malignant. He inhumanly put his own 
mother to death. He cared for neither justice 
nor mercy. . He was the author of many 
intolerable oppressions and wrongs to his 



34 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

people. He eared not how much he degraded 
any class of Romans. Under him Peter and 
Paul suffered martyrdom. To him Paul is 
supposed to refer in 2 Tim. iv. 11, as a lion. 
His persecutions of the Christians as a class, 
began A. D. 64, and lasted till his death, 
which occurred in June, A. D. 68. He caused 
Rome to be set on fire, that he might have the 
pleasure of seeing a spectacle like that of the 
burning of Troy, and then charged the awful 
crime on the Christians. So fearful was the 
havoc made in the Church that one might see 
cities full of the bodies of dead men and 
-women cast out uncovered in the open streets. 
Such crime and cruelty cannot always proceed. 
If Christian long-suffering forbears and divine 
mercy withholds direct thunderbolts of wrath, 
wicked men themselves will not always be 
idle. High and low at last conspired to rid 
the world of the intolerable burden of this 
one man's crimes and iniquities. Seeing con- 
dign punishment awaiting him, overwhelmed 
with anguish, forsaken by those who had 
applauded his vices, and lashed by a guilty 



FOB THE TKUTH. 35 

conscience, he committed suicide, and rushed 
unbidden into the presence of the God whose 
martyrs he had slain. Then for a time 
God's people had less annoyance. 

But in A. D. 94 a second general perse- 
cution of the Christians in the Roman empire 
began. It raged with great violence, and 
gave the crown of martyrdom to multitudes. 
It was under the authority and instigation of 
the emperor, Titus Flavius Domitian. Like 
Nero, his early history promised well. He 
seemed to have an almost feminine gentle- 
ness, an uncommon mildness of disposition. 
At length his mind took a turn toward 
cruelty. At first he tortured flies with a 
bodkin. Soon he became wanton in his in- 
flictions of suffering on men, till in the forty- 
third year of his age his cruelties burst forth 
in flaming and indiscriminate wrath against 
God's people. His pride was insufferable, 
his arrogance like that of Nebuchadnezzar. 
He required his own image to be worshipped. 
His malice was not a little excited against the 
great men of his empire. He had a special spite 



36 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

against all the descendants of David, and par- 
ticularly the near kinsmen of our Lord. In 
this persecution there was a resort to nearly 
every conceivable device for inflicting pain 
and begetting terror. This persecution was 
also more cunning than that of Nero, inas- 
much as all the arts of deception were em- 
ployed in inventing false charges against the 
Christians to cover up the foulness of the 
murders perpetrated under forms of law. It 
was alleged that Christians held Christ's 
kingdom was of this world ; that all public 
calamities were owing to the impiety and 
atheism of Christians; and that the Christians 
practiced great wickedness, of which no proof 
was ever submitted. But God at length had 
mercy on his poor suffering people, took his 
almighty hand off the hearts of some wicked 
men, and let loose their horrid passions on 
Domitian. After two years of persecution of 
Christians, Domitian was assassinated A. D. 
96. Thus ended one of the most cruel and 
extensive persecutions ever waged against 
truth and righteousness. Bloody and deceit- 



FOE THE TRUTH. 37 

ful men shall not live out half their days. 
But the Church had rest for only a year or 
two ; for though Domitian was succeeded by 
the wise and mild Cocceius Nerva, who lived 
but a short time, yet there soon came the 
brave and brutal, the popular and persecuting 
M. Alpinus Crinitus Trajan, whose sensibili- 
ties had probably been blunted in the Asiatic 
campaigns of Vespasian and Titus, and who 
probably confounded Judaism and Christian- 
ity. Under him, in A. D. 98, began the 
third general persecution, which lasted 
much longer than those under Nero and 
Domitian. It was exceedingly dreadful, be- 
cause, though without the capricious and fit- 
ful cruelty of some others, it had the awful 
severity of the worst, and swept multitudes 
into eternity. Trajan reigned about twenty 
years. From his death, A. D. 118, there was 
no general and legal hunting and murdering 
of God's people till after the death of Anto- 
ninus Pius, which occurred in A. D. 161. 

Soon after began the fourth general 
persecution under Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 



38 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

who had married Faustina, the daughter of 
Antoninus Pius, and who reigned nineteen 
years, with great severity of conduct toward the 
Christians, although his treatment of his pagan 
subjects won for him unusual popularity. His 
son, the feeble, debauched and cruel Commodus, 
succeeded him and kept up the persecution 
for twelve years longer, and then perished by 
poison given him by his concubine, Marcia. 
One of his last victims was a Roman senator. 
After the death of Commodus the Church had 
comparative rest for twelve or thirteen years, 
till after the middle of the reign of Lucius 
Septimus Severus, when the fifth general 
persecution began. This emperor was bold, 
enterprising, and for more than ten years of 
his power seemed to consult the good of all his 
subjects. But at length his Cainish malice 
was roused, perhaps by false and slanderous 
accusations against the Christians. About 
A. D. 205 the number of martyrs slain was 
immense. On all hands was slaughter. But 
in Africa the number of victims was frightful. 
Severus died in A. D. 211, but it is not cer- 



FOR THE TRUTH. 39 

tain whether in Germany or in Britain — 
whether by violence or by disease. His end 
terminated this flow of precious blood for 
about twenty-four years. 



40 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 



CHAPTER IX. 

TELE EAST FIVE GENERAL PERSECUTIONS. 

pAIUS JULIUS YERUS MAXIMI- 

Vy NUS was the next great persecutor. He 
was the son of a Thracian peasant, then a 
successful soldier, then emperor. He was in 
frame and strength a giant; in temper and 
conduct wanton and cruel ; to good men an 
object of detestation ; to his country a curse. 
He was raised to imperial power by the army 
rather than by the senate. He had hardly 
put on the diadem of the Caesars until a new 
Iliad of woes opened on the Church. Under 
him occurred the sixth general persecution 
of Christians. While it lasted it was indeed 
dreadful. The authorities at hand are not 
agreed as to the exact time of his death. It 
is well known that his career of crime and 
cruelty was not very long (some say three 



FOE THE TRUTH. 41 

years), and was terminated by the very sol- 
diers whom he had made familiar with scenes 
of murderous carnage. The triumph of the 
wicked is short. 

The seventh general persecution was 
begun under Decius, who became emperor 
A. D. 249. The havoc he made of the Church 
was truly frightful. His rage knew no bounds. 
He came into power by killing his master 
Philip, who had been just and even kind to 
the Christians, and had confided the public 
treasure to Fabian, a Roman bishop. Per- 
haps this very circumstance made Decius the 
more furious against God's people. Although 
he was emperor but two years, yet it is proba- 
ble that more martyrs suffered in those twenty- 
four months than in any equal portion of 
time under any other of the Csesars. One 
sober writer compares the number of martyrs 
to the sands on the seashore. Decius was 
victorious in battle against the Persians, but 
soon after perished with his army in a morass 
fighting against the Goths. His successor 

was C. Yibius Gallus, who soon took up the 
4* 



42 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

business of persecutor where his predecessor 
had left it. In his character was nothing to 
admire. He died a violent death : his sol- 
diers assassinated him. 

For a few subsequent years God's people 
had considerable quiet under Publius Licinius 
Valerianus. But ere long, about A. D. 257, 
began the eighth general persecution. Va- 
lerian's mind became poisoned, it is said, 
through the influence gained over him by an 
Egyptian. It is probable also that some 
professed Christians committed indiscretions 
and showed too great fondness for the world, 
though there is no evidence that they plotted 
or perpetrated any crime. The end of this 
monster was dreadful. He waged war against 
the Goths, Scythians and Persians. The 
Persians captured him, carried him through 
their country as a spectacle, and at last, by 
the order of Sapor, king of Persia, he was 
flayed alive and his skin, tanned, was hung 
up in a Persian temple. This fearful end 
and the providence of God over the mind of 
his son and colleague, Gallienus, moderated 



FOR THE TRUTH. 43 

his ferocity, though he did not wholly stop 
the effusion of innocent blood. He was him- 
self assassinated, A. D. 268. 

The ninth general persecution was begun 
by the emperor Aurelian, the son of an II- 
lyrian peasant. He has been famous for his 
conquest of Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, and 
infamous for his intended cruelties against the 
Christians and for his crimes against his own 
blood relations. He had prepared, but never 
actually signed, a decree of persecution against 
the Church. While meditating these awful 
calamities against his best subjects, God let 
loose the passions of Pagans against him. 
After reigning four years or less, he was 
assassinated A. D. 275. But during his 
reign, and under Tacitus and Florianus, the 
numbers of Christians who suffered imprison- 
ment and who expected death was very great. 

The. tenth and last general persecution 
bears the name of Dioclesian. Caius Valerius 
Dioclesian was of an humble family in Dal- 
matia. He became emperor A. D. 284. 
He chose as his colleague Galerius Valerius 



44 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

Maximian, a Thracian shepherd. These united 
with them two others, Galerius and Constan- 
tius. These four men seemed to be just and 
mild, and for a considerable time were very- 
prosperous in public affairs. At length suc- 
cess engendered pride, and pride is impiety. 
Dioclesian began his fearful course by requir- 
ing divine honours to be paid to him. This 
was soon followed by the sacking and demol- 
ishing of churches and by the burning of the 
Holy Scriptures. These acts were followed 
by persecuting decrees sent forth in rapid 
succession, until, in extent, terror and cruelty, 
there had been nothing in history like the 
Dioclesian persecution. Serena, the emperor's 
wife, herself became a victim. In every cruel 
form, for ten years together, these four men, 
with others like them, stained every part of 
the empire with the blood of the saints. Dio- 
clesian lacked neither talent nor force of cha- 
racter, but all this made him the more danger- 
ous enemy to the Church of God. 



FOR THE TRUTH. 45 



CHAPTER X. 

LA.TEM PERSECUTIONS. 

SINCE these ten general persecutions there 
have been many horrible slaughters of the 
saints. It seems to be generally admitted that 
not less than a million of the Waldenses were 
put to death in France. Nearly as many 
orthodox Christians were slain in less than 
forty years after the establishment of the order 
of Jesuits. The Duke of Alva boasted that 
in his short career in the Low Countries he had 
caused thirty-six thousand to be put to death 
by the common executioner. And so it has 
been in all times of persecution. When the 
wolves have gotten among the flock, they have 
glutted a mighty raven ere they lay down to 
rest. Persecutors have no pity. There is no 
flesh in their heart. Like death and hell, they 
are never full. The United States of America 



46 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

and Mexico do not this day contain as many- 
souls as have been slain for the word of God 
and the testimony of Jesus. 

There is a general impression in the Chris- 
tian world that yet other bloody persecutions 
await the Church. This is probably correct. 
More than one prophecy of Scripture indicates 
that before the close of the present dispensa- 
tion the passions of malignant men will be 
let loose in the direst manner to afflict the 
saints. But it is not germane to the object of 
this work to go at length into the considera- 
tion of prophecy. 

Some have suggested that probably in the 
wasting of future persecutions God's people 
in America may be exempt from the fiery 
trials that shall come on the churches of the 
Old World. Perhaps this is rather a kind 
wish than a judgment founded on any teach- 
ing of Scripture. If the people of this country 
have not shed much of the blood of saints, 
they are in many cases the descendants of 
persecutors. The law of retribution is still 
in force. The causes which disturb the pas- 



FOR THE TRUTH. 47 

sions of men and arouse the malignity of 
mankind have, and will probably continue to 
have, as full sway and as fell swoop in America 
as in any other part of the world. Coming 
across the Atlantic is no cure for the enmity 
of the human heart against godliness and 
Christian simplicity. The combinations of 
the elements of wickedness are easily formed. 
Where men feel heart to heart the distinctions 
of birth, sect or nationality are easily set 
aside; and bad men, moved by a common 
impulse, are easily fused into a molten mass 
of spite and wrath, desolating everything in 
its track and burying whole provinces in 
indiscriminate ruin. 



48 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 



CHAPTER XL 

A MEMAItKABZJE AND AVTHJENTIC DOCU- 
MENT. 

PLINY'S LETTER TO TRAJAN. 

piECILIUS SECUNDUS PLINY was 

V^ the nephew of Caius Secundus Pliny, the 
philosopher, who wrote the Natural History, 
and lost his life A. D. 79, by making too 
near an approach to the crater of Vesuvius 
during an eruption. Csecilius Pliny is com- 
monly called Pliny the Younger. He had 
the best advantages of education, having 
Quintilian for his instructor. He was greatly 
esteemed for his general good character. He 
was a fine writer and a favourite of the emperor 
Trajan. He died A. D. 113. During the 
third general persecution he was governor 
of Bithynia, and wrote to Trajan the following 
letter : 



FOR THE TRUTH, 49 

"C. Pliny to the Emperor Trajan, 
wishes health. 

" Sire : It is customary with me to consult 
you on every doubtful occasion ; for where 
my own judgment hesitates, who is more 
competent to direct me than yourself or to 
instruct me where uninformed ? I had no 
occasion to be present at the examination of 
the Christians before I came into the pro- 
vince ; I am therefore ignorant to what extent 
it is usual to inflict punishment or urge prose- 
cution. I have also hesitated whether there 
should not be some distinction between the 
young and the old, the tender and the robust ; 
whether pardon should not be offered to re- 
pentance, or whether the guilt of an avowed 
profession of Christianity can be expiated by 
the most unequivocal retraction ; whether the 
profession itself is to be regarded as a crime, 
however innocent in other respects the 
prisoner may be; or whether the crimes 
attached to the name must be proved before 
they are made liable to punishment. 

" In the mean time, the method I have pur- 

5 



50 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

sued with the Christians who have been 
accused as such has been this. I interro- 
gated them, Are you Christians? If they 
affirmed, I put the same question a second 
and a third time, menacing them with the 
punishment decreed. If they still persisted, 
I ordered them to be immediately executed ; 
for I did not doubt, whatever was the nature 
of their religion, that such stubbornness and 
obstinacy certainly deserved punishment. 
Some that were afflicted with this madness, 
because they were Roman citizens, I reserved 
to be sent to Rome, to be tried at your tri- 
bunal. 

" In the discussion of this matter, accusations 
multiplying, a diversity of cases occurred. A 
list of names was sent me by an unknown 
accuser, but when I cited the persons before 
me, many denied that they were or ever had 
been Christians ; and they repeated after me 
an invocation of the gods and of your image, 
which for this purpose I had ordered to be 
brought with the statues of the deities. They 
burned incense and offered libations of wine 



FOR THE TRUTH. 51 

to the gods, and blasphemed Christ ; none of 
which things, I am assured, a real Christian 
can ever be compelled to do. Others, named 
by an informer, at first acknowledged them- 
selves, and then denied it, declaring that 
though they had been Christians, they had 
renounced their profession some three years 
ago, others still longer, and some even twenty 
years ago. All these worshipped your image 
and the statues of the gods, and execrated 
Christ. 

" And this was the account they gave me of 
the nature of the religion they once had pro- 
fessed, whether it deserves the name of crime 
or error : namely, that they were accustomed 
on a certain day to assemble before day, and 
to join in singing hymns to Christ as God ; 
binding themselves as with a solemn oath not 
to commit any kind of wickedness ; to be 
guilty neither of theft, robbery nor adultery ; 
never to break a promise nor to defraud any 
man. Their worship being ended, it was 
their custom to separate, and meet together 
again for a repast, promiscuous indeed, and 



52 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

without any distinction of rank or sex, but 
without any act of evil ; and even from this 
they deserted since the publication of my 
edict, in which, agreeably to your orders, I 
forbade any societies of that sort. 

"For further information I thought it neces- 
sary, in order to come at the truth, to put to 
the torture two maidens. But I could extort 
from them nothing but the acknowledgment 
of an immoderate superstition ; and therefore 
desisting from further investigation, I deter- 
mined to consult you ; especially as the num- 
ber of those who were in danger from your 
decree was great. Informations are pouring 
in against multitudes of every age, of all 
orders and of both sexes ; and more will be 
accused, for this infection has crept not only 
into cities but also into villages, and even 
into farm-houses. Yet I think it may be 
checked ; for in many places the temples of 
the gods, once almost desolate, now begin to 
be frequented, and from every quarter they 
bring sacrifices to be sold, whereas formerly 
very few were found willing to buy them. 



FOR THE TBUTH. 53 

From this I infer that many might be re- 
claimed if time and space were given them, 
and the hope of pardon on their repentance 
absolutely confirmed." 

5* 



54 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 



CHAPTER XII. 

TME KJEJPZY, WITS KJEFIECTIOJTS. 

TO this letter Trajan replied: 
"My Dear Pliny: You have done 
perfectly right in managing as you have the 
matters which relate to the impeachment of 
the Christians. No one general rule can be 
laid down which will apply to all cases. 
These people are not to be hunted up by in- 
formers, but if accused and convicted, let 
them be executed ; yet with this restriction, 
that if any renounce the profession of Chris- 
tianity, and give proof of it by offering suppli- 
cations to our gods, however suspicious their 
conduct may have been, they shall be par- 
doned. But anonymous accusations should 
never be heeded, since it would be establish- 
ing a precedent of the worst kind, and alto- 
gether inconsistent with the maxims of my 
government." 



FOR THE TRUTH. 55 

Pliny's letter and the emperor's reply call 
for a few remarks : 

1. The enmity of the human heart against 
God and his people is exceedingly dreadful. 
It balks at nothing. It is the same from 
age to age. It knows no bounds. In the 
populace it assumes the form of brutal rage ; 
in the unprincipled it breaks out in clandes- 
tine informations; in the philosophic and 
generally humane it still persecutes even unto 
death. It is a deadly malice, a mortal hatred, 
seeking the utter extinction of true religion 
from the face of the earth. All infidels are 
in inclination pagans and persecutors. Because 
the carnal mind is enmity against God, it is 
enmity against all that is called by his name 
or shows forth his glory, or preserves alive 
the memory of his being, wisdom, power, 
holiness, justice, goodness, truth and mercy. 
Its malice rages no less against a youth or a 
woman than against one of the stronger sex 
and in the prime of life. It despises the 
ties of nature, the bonds of affection. Jesus 
said it should be so. Matt. x. 21, 22 ; xxiv. 



56 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

9-13; Luke xxi. 16, 17. Good men need 
trials, and therefore feel no surprise at out- 
bursts of popular rage, nor at the schemes of 
cruel and cunning politicians for tormenting 
the saints. The ignorance and fierceness of 
the ungodly would swallow up all piety in a 
day if it were possible. 

2. While a hypocritical pretence to piety, 
or a mere form of religion without its power, 
frequently passes unreproved, it is not possi- 
ble for true vital godliness to escape the 
scorn or even bitter resentments of the 
wicked. M: good confession of Christ is, 
after all, the greatest offence one can offer to 
a gainsaying world. 

" I asked them, Are you Christians ? If 
they avowed it, I put the same question a 
second and a third time ; if they persisted, I 
ordered them to be immediately executed," 
says Pliny; and Trajan says, " You have done 
perfectly right." The offence of the cross has 
not ceased. Pure religion and undefiled is 
the greatest crime man can commit in the 
eyes of the ungodly and unsanctified. It was, 



FOE THE TKUTH. 57 

and again may be, a " capital offence for any 
one to avow himself a Christian." 

3. It is clear, from this letter and from 
many monuments of antiquity, that in less 
than a century after the death of Christ his 
doctrine was extensively embraced and his 
followers were very numerous. The temples 
in Bithynia had become " almost desolate." 
Victims had nearly ceased to be brought 
thither for the want of purchasers. 

While things went thus in one region, in 
Syria the spread of the truth seems to have 
been no less rapid. In a letter to Trajan, the 
governor Tiberianus says : " I am quite 
w T earied with punishing and destroying, accord- 
ing to your order, the Galileans, or those of 
the sect called Christians. Yet they never 
cease to profess voluntarily what they are, 
and to offer themselves to death. Where- 
fore I have laboured, by extortions and threats, 
to discourage them from daring to confess to 
me that they are of that sect. Yet, in spite 
of all persecution, they continue still to do it." 
Indeed, from the beginning of the second 



58 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

century to the time of Constantino, the simple 
withdrawal of the Christians from the empire 
would have left a " a hideous gap," an awful 
desolation, not only in some inconsiderable 
places, but in many famous cities and prov- 
inces. God's word ran very swiftly. Even 
in Paul's time " their sound went into all the 
earth, and their words unto the ends of the 
world." Eom. x. 18. 

4. Idolatry and true religion can never be 
reconciled. Fire and water are not more 
opposed. Idolatry stops at nothing. It 
addresses religious homage not only to gods 
many, supposed to be in heaven, but to bulls 
and cats and onions on earth. Not only the 
image of Jupiter, but the image of Trajan, 
must be worshipped. It multiplies the sor- 
rows of all who hasten after it. It murders 
not only its enemies, but also its friends. 
Against such a system pure religion and 
undefiled must be antagonistic. It denounces 
all the pomp and pageantry of the most 
solemn rites of heathenism. It is utterly 
opposite to its doctrines, its morals and its 



FOE THE TEUTH. 59 

worship. The two can never agree. They 
are contrary the one to the other. Modern 
idolatry in power does as ancient idolatry 
practiced. It is as cruel and as devilish in 
Madagascar in the nineteenth century as in 
Rome in the first or second century. 

5. We should not be surprised at apostasies. 
They are no novelty. The trials of successive 
ages vary in their form, sometimes being 
seductive and sometimes terrific, but poor 
human nature, if left to itself, can resist none 
of the assaults of the wicked. Seduction is 
often more potent than persecution. Demas 
seems to have withstood the latter, but to have 
been overcome by the former. False brethren 
have been found in the church in all ages. 
An apostle thus explains the whole matter of 
wilful apostasy : " They went out from us, 
but they were not of us ; for if they had been 
of us they would no doubt have continued 
with us : but they went out, that they might 
be made manifest that they were not all of 
us." 1 John ii. 19. In every age apostasies 
have occurred. There have always been men 



60 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

who wished to wear the crown, but could not 
bear the cross. " It is no new thing for men 
to desert the profession of the truth, to which 
they have formerly appeared to be attached, 
through the fear of man or the love of the 
world." 

6. Pliny's letter shows that from the first 
Christianity was, as it is now, a pure system, 
and was so understood by those who heartily 
embraced it. Even torture could produce 
nothing to the damage of the blameless lives 
of the early Christians. They never com- 
mitted theft, fraud or adultery. Their word 
was sacred. They never denied a trust. 
Such fruits heathenism had never borne. 
They are the product of Christian morals. 
Blessed are those professed followers of Christ 
who by well-doing put to silence the ignorance 
of foolish men, and against whom the enemy 
can say nothing evil unless he say it falsely. 
Even apostates themselves said nothing worse 
of the character and doings of Christians than 
that one could not continue in good standing 
among them unless he led a holy life. 



FOR THE TRUTH. 61 

7. It also appears that the early Christians 
were of a quiet spirit, and even gave up for 
a time their public meetings in the day-time 
when they were by edict forbidden. They 
would not have their good evil spoken of. 
They quietly met before day, that they might 
not disturb the peace of neighbourhoods. And 
although they were so numerous that they 
could have made successful resistance by the 
sword, they never once resorted to violence, 
even in self-protection. 

8. From earliest ages the divinity of Christ 
has been a fundamental doctrine received by 
all true Christians. The martyrs and confes- 
sors sung " hymns to Christ as God." They 
received him as their Lord, and worshipped 
him. This was the secret of all their power 
and intrepidity. Never would they have 
joyously died for Christ if he had not been 
to them all in all, the chiefest among ten 
thousand, the Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty 
God, the Everlasting Father, and the Prince 
of peace. They worshipped him because 
they knew that as God he was with them> 

6 



62 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

even where two or three were met in his 
name. 

9. In yielding their civil and social rights 
Christians may often go far, but they cannot 
yield their convictions — they cannot surrender 
their consciences. The governor and his 
creatures thought they required but little 
w T hen they called on the Christians to repeat a 
few words of invocation to an image or to 
throw a little incense on the fire ; but there 
was principle involved. Good men could die 
for Jesus, but they could not sacrifice or pray 
to idols. The dictates of conscience, enlight- 
ened by the word of God, cannot and ought 
not to be unheeded. We must obey God 
rather than men. 

10. There are many reasons why Christian- 
ity is unpopular. One is, that it inflexibly 
maintains the unity of God, 1 Tim. iv. 10 : 
"Therefore we both labour and suffer re- 
proach, because we trust in the living God." 
Another is, that its author was hanged upon a 
tree, 1 Cor. i. 23. Another is that it spares 
no sin, no lust, but demands self-denial and 



FOR THE TRUTH. 63 

holiness of all, Matt. xvi. 24 ; xii. 14 ; 1 Pet. 
i. 15. Another is that it denies the possibil- 
ity of salvation by any works or merits of 
the sinner himself; but points him to the 
righteousness of Christ as the sole and suffi- 
cient ground of acceptance with God, Horn, 
iii. 20 ; Gal. ii. 16 ; Horn. x. 4. To all these 
we must add that Christianity has always 
been exclusive, and has denied fraternity to 
any and every form of idolatry and of false re- 
ligion. This is but carrying out in their true 
import the precepts of the first table of the 
law. The same objection was made to pure 
Judaism. Celsus tells the whole story : " If 
the Jews, on these accounts, adhere to their 
own law, it is not for that they are to blame ; 
I rather blame those who forsake the religion 
of their own country to embrace the Jewish. 
But if these people give themselves airs of 
sublimer wisdom than the rest of the world, 
and on that score refuse all communion with 
it as not equally pure, I must tell them that 
it is not ,to be believed that they are more 
dear or agreeable to God than other nations." 



64 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

Had the Christians merely proposed their 
creed as one of many systems which might 
be advantageously followed, and their Sa- 
viour as one of many whose favour might be 
supplicated, they would have incurred very 
little odium. It was the fact that their sys- 
tem claimed an exclusive divine origin, and 
regulated their conduct accordingly, that 
made Tacitus, when he wrote of the burning 
of Rome, call Christians " persons convicted 
of hatred to all mankind." He and thou- 
sands believed that it was a higher proof of 
love to let your neighbour alone in his sins, 
and to fraternize with him in his false wor- 
ship, than it was to tell him the truth, give 
him faithful warning and refuse to be a par- 
taker of his abominable idolatries. 

11. The world has never understood the 
real principles and motives of God's people. 
Even Trajan and Pliny, with all their natu- 
ral good sense and fine talents, misunderstood 
their whole character and behaviour. Stern 
and unbending integrity is commonly ad- 
mitted to be a fine quality. Close adherence 



FOR THE TRUTH. 65 

to our enlightened convictions of right ought 
to command respect and even admiration. 
But the steadiness of the early Christians in 
adhering to their Master and his cause was 
regarded as a crime worthy of death. "I 
was persuaded," says Pliny, " whatever the 
nature of their opinions might be, a contu- 
macious and inflexible obstinacy certainly 
merited correction." And Trajan tells him 
he judged right. So they wrapped it up. 
If we may call all zeal, madness ; all princi- 
ple, absurdity ; all firmness, contumacy ; and 
all intrepidity, rashness and obstinacy, we can 
be at no loss for grounds on which to con- 
demn all goodness on earth. The same blind- 
ness and perverseness which kept the world 
from rightly judging respecting Christ him- 
self, perpetuate false judgments respecting his 
people. Acts iii. 17 ; 1 John iii. 1. " The 
world knoweth us not, because it knew him 
not." This blindness is not the less criminal 
because it is natural, universal, and by human 
wit and power invincible. 1 Cor. ii. 14. Car- 
nal men cannot understand spiritual things, 
6 * 



66 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

cannot rightly estimate holy motives and 
principles. 

12. It is common for the wicked to perse- 
cute the righteous under false pretences — to 
find pretexts in something foreign from the 
Christian life and character. There is as 
much difference between firmness and obsti- 
nacy, between fortitude and contumacy, as 
there is between light and darkness, between 
vice and virtue. Because the Christians 
could not defile their consciences they were 
said to have the very spirit of rebellion 
against political authority. Then too they 
were held answerable for all the public calami- 
ties that befel the empire. Tertullian says, 
u If the city be besieged, if anything happen 
ill in the fields, in the garrisons, in the lands, 
immediately they cry out, 'Tis because of 
the Christians. Our enemies thirst after the 
blood of the innocent, cloaking their hatred 
with this silly pretence, that the Christians 
are the cause of all public calamities. If the 
Tiber flows up to the walls ; if the Nile does 
not overflow the field ; if the heavens alter 



FOR THE TRUTH. 67 

their course; if there be an earthquake, a 
famine, a plague, immediately the cry is, 
Away with the Christians to the lions." The 
favourite slanderous charge against God's 
people is, that they are disaffected toward the 
government, because they announce unwel- 
come but seasonable truths, because they 
stand aloof from the fury of the masses, or 
dissent from the foolish and wicked course of 
those in power. Thus of Jeremiah it was 
said, " Thou fallest away to the Chaldeans," 
Jer. xxxvii. 13. Thus Amaziah sent to 
Jeroboam, king of Israel, saying : "Amos hath 
conspired against thee in the midst of the 
house of Israel : the land is not able to hear 
all his words." Amos vii. 10. Thus men 
accused Christ and his apostles. Pretences 
are never wanting to wicked and bloody men. 
They know that nothing is more odious 
than unfaithfulness in the civil relations of 
life ; and when they lack all true ground of 
accusation in this behalf, they invent some 
story, or, frame some law, or devise some 
test which good men abhor, that in some way 



68 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

they may enrage the populace, prejudice 
rulers and have their spite on the objects of 
their murderous malice, their diabolical envy. 
13. It would be well, even in Christian 
countries, if all in authority would so far fol- 
low the example of Trajan as to refuse to pay 
attention to anonymous accusers, frown from 
their presence malignant and 'unprincipled 
slanderers, and, instead of hunting up informers 
and maligners, would cast the shield of public 
law over all well-disposed and quiet people 
who obey all the laws and quietly mind 
their own business. 



FOR THE TRUTH. 69 



CHAPTER XIII. 
jL mo&ekn martyr. 

MODERN civilization has been sadly dis- 
graced by both the spirit and practice 
of persecution. At the close of this book 
will be found a short list of books where may 
be found full accounts of these awful tragedies. 
One is here given as a sample of what human 
and diabolical malice will do, as also of what 
divine grace can enable its subject to accom- 
plish. The intelligent will not wonder at the 
selection of 

JOHN BRADFORD. 

This faithful and eminent servant of Christ 
fell a victim to the malice and bigotry of 
Bloody Mary of England. She determined 
to establish popery in her dominions at any 
cost. 



70 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

So powerful a preacher was he, and so 
desirous was the infamous Bonner, bishop of 
London, to induce him to return to the 
Romish Church, that more pains were taken 
with him and more patience exercised than 
with any other professor of the Reformed 
faith. 

But the attempt was vain. Bradford held 
fast his confidence and the rejoicing of his 
hope, and in January, 1555, after being in 
prison eighteen months, he was tried for his 
refusal to submit to Romanism before Gardi- 
ner, Bonner and others, and condemned to 
the stake. He was kept in prison till July 
following. It was not intended to give him 
any notice of the day fixed for his death. 
" As he was walking in the keeper's chamber 
with John Leof, who suffered with him, sud- 
denly/' says Fox, " the keeper's wdfe came 
up as one amazed, and seeming much troubled, 
being almost breathless, said, ' Oh, Mr. Brad- 
ford, I come to bring you heavy news.' i What 
is that ?' said he. ' To-morrow,' she replied, 
'you must be burned.'" This was sudden 



FOR THE TRUTH. 71 

indeed, but it did not take him at unawares. 
Fox adds, "With that, Mr. Bradford put off 
his cap, and lifting up his eyes to heaven, 
said, i I thank God for it. I have looked for 
the same a long time, and therefore it cometh 
not to me now suddenly, but as a thing waited 
for every day and hour ; the Lord make me 
worthy thereof.' " 

Accordingly, next morning, he and young 
Leof were early led forth, a multitude throng- 
ing the way, who sympathized deeply with 
them ; and some near relatives, who pressed 
forward to shake hands with and give a 
parting blessing to Bradford, were brutally 
used by the sheriff and his assistants. 

When they came to the stake in Smithfield, 
they laid themselves down on the ground, "one 
on one side of it, the other on the other, pray- 
ing to themselves the space of a minute ;" in 
this they were interrupted by one of the 
sheriffs crying to them, " Arise, make an end, 
for the press of people is great." 

They rose, and Bradford taking a fagot in 
his hand, kissed it and also the stake. He 



72 MAETYES AND SUFFEEEES 

then requested that his clothes might be 
given to his servant, for he had nothing else 
to give him. He put off his upper garment 
and went to the stake, saying, " O England, 
England ! repent thee of thy sins, repent thee 
of thy sins !" He was stopped by the sheriff 
threatening to tie his hands if he would not 
be quiet. Turning to the people, he asked 
forgiveness of all, as he forgave all, and 
besought them to pray for him and his fellow- 
sufferer, to whom he said, " Be of good com- 
fort, brother, for we shall have a merry sup- 
per with the Lord this night." Embracing 
the dry rods that were bundled round him, 
he cried, " Strait is the way and narrow the 
gate that leadeth to eternal salvation, and few 
there be that find it." Fire was set to the 
pile, and two precious lives were taken away. 
Thus these holy men went up to glory in 
a chariot of fire. 



FOR THE TRUTH. 73 



CHAPTER XIV. 

BOMANISM IN MOMJE. 

BY A. B. C, 

AN inside view of Romanism is not easily 
obtained, even at the metropolis of the 
papal empire. There are so many gates 
that are kept closed to a Protestant, and so 
many doors not easily opened to him ; there 
are so much glare of gold and glitter of tin- 
selry on the outside, and so many charms of 
music and fascinations of art ; so much stained 
glass and " dim religious light," that between 
the dazzle and the darkness I began to fear 
lest my eyes might be so blinded as to be of 
small use to me. 

But I rubbed them a little and bathed 
them in the clear water of the Divine Word, 
and, aided by my historical glass, I soon be- 
7 



74 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

gan to see more plainly, and to survey the 
Scarlet Lady in her interior character as well 
as external attractions. 

I do not wonder that a superstitious, en- 
thusiastic, voluptuous people should be Ro- 
man Catholic there at Rome — that any one, 
almost, should be with whom a taste for the 
fine arts transcends a love of the truth as it 
is in Jesus. Nor yet do I wonder that ro- 
mantic girls and imaginative, would-be-poetic 
boys, on whom gospel truth has no firm hold, 
charmed by the free notions of this earthly en- 
chantress, and the exalted ideas of antiquity, 
authority and infallibility which she incul- 
cates, should be caught in the sweep of her 
rustling drapery. 

All that art and wealth, all that dress and 
drapery can do, has been done for the Romish 
Chiirch. It is vain, as well as sinful, for 
Protestants to enter the lists with her as 
rivals in these things. She has the advan- 
tage of accumulated treasures and of a thou- 
sand years' experience, and they cannot suc- 
cessfully compete with her. Their only hope 



FOE THE TEUTH. 75 

is in the counter-principles — simplicity, sin- 
cerity and truth. Light is more powerful 
than darkness, sincerity is mightier than 
ceremony — the Bible than the breviary. 

In its principles and pretensions the Romish 
Church is to-day very much what it was five 
hundred years ago. It is mediaeval still. 
Its organization is even more complete now 
than it was then, though relatively much 
feebler. 

Two features impressed me very strongly 
in my study of the papacy at Rome : 

Its three peculiar principles and its five 
chief institutions. 

These give the clew to the exclusiveness, 
intolerance and persecution which for a 
thousand years have marked the history of 
Romanism. 

Of its principles, that which lies at the 
foundation is its claim to be the only catholic 
and apostolic Church, and that salvation is 
not possible out of its pale. The practical 
inference from this assumption is, that it is 
nearly impossible for one to fail of salvation 



76 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

who is in it. This principle, so sweepingly 
exclusive, necessarily makes the Romish 
Church intolerant and persecuting. It places 
her in direct and positive opposition to every 
other organization that claims to be a Church. 
And, the more fully its members accept this 
fundamental dogma of Romanism, the more 
likely are they to regard all means as lawful 
for extending the one and for exterminating 
the others. 

The worth of the soul, and the importance 
of its salvation, serve only, on this principle, 
to intensify their zeal as proselyters. The 
Church of Rome, to them, is the only form 
of Christianity and the only way of salvation. 
The hope of the world is here, and there is 
none for it anywhere else. Nothing is of 
such moment as the extension of this Church, 
and the extermination of whatever co-ordi- 
nate claimants stand in its way. For men to 
be deluded by these rival organisms is cer- 
tain and eternal ruin. Where the Church of 
Rome is not, there ignorance, error and all 
vices and crimes abound, and moral death 



FOU THE TRUTH. 77 

broods over men. But where its influence is 
unrestrained all these have gradually disap- 
peared, and the light of science, of truth, and 
of eternal life have come most benignly to 
shine. 

In this false faith bigotry seizes and incar- 
cerates its victims and confiscates their prop- 
erty. Fanaticism lights its fagots and fans 
its fires for the glory of God and the diffu- 
sion of the gospel. 

In an important sense the Church is a vast 
moral power. This is the truth contained in 
this Romish error, and is the source of its 
influence. But the Romish Church is not the 
Church, either exclusively or par excellence. 
The assumption of this is its error and the 
cause of its moral weakness. Falsehood is 
always weak, and must fail when truth fairly 
confronts it. 

Another of those peculiar principles is its 
claim to temporal power. 

Christ said, " My kingdom is not of this 
world." The Pope says, "Mine is." The 
Master gave to Peter the " keys," but his 
7* 



78 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

reputed successor in the episcopal chair has 
taken the sword also. Pope Pius IX., in 
his last encyclical letter, says that " the 
apostolic see is based on the temporal 
power." He classes the idea that " the ces- 
sation of the temporal power would con- 
tribute to the happiness and liberty of the 
Church" among the principal errors of the 
times to be condemned and punished. And 
the grand council of two hundred and forty- 
five bishops, archbishops and patriarchs, 
which assembled in Rome in 1862, " affirm 
that the temporal sovereignty of the holy 
see is a necessity, and that it has been estab- 
lished by the manifest design of Providence," 
Therefore it must by all means be retained. 

This necessity looks beyond the Church as 
a " pillar and ground of the truth" to a 
purely political force. As a spiritual organism, 
she can execute only spiritual pains and 
penalties. But by her temporal sovereignty, 
and through the political powers she controls, 
those who fall under her ban as heretics are 
executed as criminals. By this double action 



FOR THE TRUTH. 79 

of the Church, the State has long played the 
part of her menial. The pope has raised up 
kings and princes and cast them down again 
at his pleasure — has absolved their subjects 
from fealty and bound them to it, irrespective 
of the will of either subjects or rulers. Power- 
ful monarchs have bowed at his gate, abjectly 
begging for the uplifting from them of his 
oppressive hand. He has fomented wars and 
declared , peace. He has made treaties and 
violated them, enthroned kings and dethroned 
them, levied taxes, raised armies, established 
arsenals, built fortresses and supported navies. 
But why does this chief feeder of Christ's 
flock need these temporal powers and this 
enginery of war? " For the good of the 
Church and the free government of souls," 
say the two hundred and forty-five chief 
papal dignitaries. " We do not hesitate to 
declare that, in the present state of human 
affairs, this temporal sovereignty is absolutely 
requisite for the good of the Church and the free 
government of souls ! M — by fires and fagots, 
by imprisonment and tortures, by gibbets 



80 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

and the gallows, by confiscations and auto 
da fes ! 

But did Christ, or did Peter, claimed as 
the first pope, possess or feel the need of this 
temporal power ? Or did any of his succes- 
sors at Rome for five hundred years possess 
it? And how was this power gained ? His- 
tory answers — her own history. Gradually 
and through successive popedoms, by chica- 
nery, by simony, by fraudulent deeds of con- 
veyance and false titles, by extortion, by 
wars and bloodshed. 

And how has this triple-crowned monarch 
used this temporal sovereignty ? In hunting 
and harassing, for nearly a thousand years, 
the saints of the Most High who have dis- 
sented from his dictum or doubted the dog- 
mas of the cardinals; by persecuting the 
Cathari, the Lollards, the Begards, the Wal- 
denses, the Albigenses, the Wickliffites and 
the Bohemians ; by pursuing unto death the 
Reformers in Holland and Hungary, in France, 
in Germany and in England, both Lutherans 
and Calvinists. 



FOR THE TRUTH. 81 

In 1572, on St. Bartholomew's eve, in the 
reign of Charles IX., the Protestants were 
decoyed by the royal oath of safety to a wed- 
ding festival in Paris. The queen dowager of 
Navarre was there perfidiously poisoned, 
Admiral Coligny treacherously assassinated, 
and ten thousand Protestants — brave men, 
delicate women and helpless children — fell 
victims to the ruthless slaughter of a brutal 
soldiery. From Paris the furor extended to 
the chief cities of the kingdom, and from fifty 
thousand to one hundred thousand of the purest 
and noblest fell in this relentless massacre. And 
when the news of this horrible carnage reached 
Gregory XIII., the cannon of St. Angelo 
belched out the public joy, and bonfires 
illumined the papal city. A thanksgiving 
mass was performed in St. Mark's Church, 
and a jubilee from this dark centre was pro- 
claimed throughout the Christian world. 

But in the reign of Louis XIV. even this 
merciless butchery was far exceeded in infer- 
nal devices — tortures by burning-irons, by 
slow roasting, hanging by the feet and by 



82 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

the hair of the head, plunging into deep wells, 
suffocating with smoke, piercing with pins, 
starving and shooting down like wild beasts. 
And Romish priests gloated over these outra- 
ges, and chanted the Te Deum in the midst 
of them, and Gloria in Excelsis ! 

" And I looked, and behold, a pale horse ; 
and his name that sat on him was Death, and 
Hell followed with him. And power was 
given unto them over the fourth part of the 
earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, 
and with death, and with the beasts of the 
earth." 

"And I saw under the altar the souls of 
them that were slain for the word of God, and 
for the testimony which they held." 

" And they cried with a loud voice, saying, 
How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou 
not judge and avenge our blood on them that 
dwell on the earth?" 

This is the use which the Romish Church 
makes of her temporal power — to enforce by 
the sword an external harmony where there 
is only internal discord. Is that a " free 



FOR THE TRUTH. 83 

government" whose chief function is to re- 
press free thought, free speech and free wor- 
ship? Is it a government "for the good of 
souls" that closes up from them God's word 
of life — that compels them to worship in a 
dead lanofua^e — that deludes them with "lv- 
ing wonders," and gives them two mediators 
where God has given but one — that changes 
a bit of bread into the body of God, and puts 
a priestly mass in the place of the divine 
sacrifice ? Does the good of souls require a 
sword in the hand of the Church to enforce 
these dicta upon unwilling subjects? Yet this 
is theoretic Romanism and systematic persecu- 
tion. And this is the philosophy of the whole 
question of temporal sovereignty. 

It changes the great issue between the 
Church and the world. From one of faith it 
makes it, as a finality, one of force. Christ 
falls out of Christianity to make room for 
Caesar — the Church drops her keys and grasps 
the sword. She withdraws the evangelists 
and apostles from the conflict, and relies on 
bullets and bayonets as the chief propagators 



84 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

and defenders of the faith. When a Church 
appeals from the Bible to bulls and bombshells, 
from arguments to arsenals and armies, it 
ceases to act in the capacity of a Christian 
Church and becomes a mere civil power, and, 
for all purposes of ecclesiastical rule, a perse- 
cuting power. 

It is a third fundamental principle of the 
Romish Church, discovered by this inside view, 
that heresy is a crime punishable with death. 

This is abundantly maintained by her 
writers on criminal law and on Christian ethics 
and theology. And it is inculcated in all 
their principal institutions of learning and by 
all monastic orders. 

Cardinal Bellarmine, the best of authorities 
on the subject, says : 

" Heretics can justly be excommunicated, 
and therefore put to death. Knowing that 
fools will not be wanting who may believe 
them, and by whom they may be supported, 
if you confine them in prison or send them 
into exile, they corrupt the neighbourhood by 
their speeches and looks ; therefore, the only 



FOR THE TRUTH. 85 

remedy is to send them forthwith to their own 
place," 

" If the forgers of money/* says Aquinas, 
another of these authorities, " or other male- 
factors, are justly consigned to immediate 
death by the secular princes, much more do 
heretics, immediately after they are convicted, 
deserve, not only to be excommunicated, but 
also justly to be killed." 

In this third principle the two former come 
to a practical point. It is the keystone in the 
arch of this spiritual despotism. The pope, 
as supreme in the one only Church, holds the 
power of excommunication. But as a tempo- 
ral sovereign he holds also the power to 
execute upon the excommunicant whatever 
penalty is judged best for the safety and 
aggrandizement of the papacy. This has 
been decided to be the death-penalty. Here- 
tics ought to be excommunicated by the 
spiritual power and put to death by the tem- 
poral. But what is heresy ? The pope, in 
his encyclical, answers : It is heresy to affirrn 
that " the best condition of society is that in 



86 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

which the power of the laity is not compelled 
to inflict the penalties of law upon the vio- 
lators of the Catholic religion, unless required 
by public safety." This is the latest assertion 
of this obnoxious, persecuting power, and by 
the highest authority. It is vital still in 
Romanism, and cannot, " except by annihila- 
tion, die." 

What is this " power of the laity?" It is 
the temporal power of the pope. It is the 
power of kings and all civil authorities and 
states, that are, or ought to be subject in this, 
to his rule. Who enacts the " law ?" The 
pope and the cardinals. Not only at Rome, 
but throughout Italy, France and Spain, and 
also in Protestant England and the United 
States, everywhere and always, the civil 
powers ought to carry out the decrees of these 
mitred ecclesiastics, and hang, burn or exile 
the excommunicants of the Romish Church, 
not as bad subjects, but as violators of the 
Catholic religion. This is the arrogance of 
the triple-crowned prince of the Vatican and 
his scarlet-clad abettors, and this the humilia- 



FOR THE TRUTH. 87 

ting vassalage in which he claims that all the 
princes of the earth ought to yield themselves 
to him as the vicar of Christ. 

The doctrine that "liberty of conscience 
and of worship is a right of every man/' by 
the same high authority is pronounced a 
heresy and " a delirium" which the spiritual 
power punishes with excommunication, and 
the temporal in all nations ought to punish 
with death. In the purely Romish countries, 
kings and princes have long done this bloody 
work of the Church. And in Rome this 
Draconic law is supreme, the persecuting 
despotism complete. 

To purchase and read the Bible or any 
other prohibited book, without a license, is an 
heretical act, and subjects the offender to 
excommunication and death. All " biblical 
societies" are classed in the appendix to his 
encyclical as " pests," and all who counte- 
nance them are held as " violators of the 
Catholic religion," on whom the "penalties 
of law" should be inflicted. 

The imprisonment and exile, a few years 



88 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

since, of Count Guiccardiani and his compan- 
ions, at Florence, for reading the gospel of 
John, was a logically defensive necessity of 
the assumptive infallibility and supremacy of 
the Romish Church. Julian the Apostate, 
for the same reason, forbade to the Christians 
the study of heathen learning. " They wound 
us/' he says, " by our own weapons ; w r ith 
our own arts and sciences they overcome us." 

Here is the vital point in the present issues 
of the papacy. She must retain her political 
character, or lose her power of compelling the 
faith of men in her sovereignty. She must 
have executioners of her most exterminating 
sentence, or her empire and her grandeur are 
ended. Then would her fulminations have 
only the force of the truth that is in them. 
Fire and fagots and the sword would, in 
her pale, give place to free thought and 
free speech. She would be obliged to meet 
dissent with argument, light with light, and 
spiritual foes with only spiritual forces. 

This she dreads. " I will listen," says the 
pope u to no more propositions modifying the 



FOR THE TBUTH. 89 

conditions of my temporal power." But in 
the year 1866, the great prophetic year for a 
downfall in Romanism, the emperor of France 
withdraws his troops from Rome, and the tem- 
poral sovereignty of the pope, sustained by 
falsehood and fraud, vanishes from the page 
of history. 

More than half a century ago wrote Xapo- 
leon I. : u The interests of religion, as well as 
those of the people of France, Germany and 
Italy, all unite in compelling his majesty to 
put an end to this temporal power, the feeble 
remnant of the exaggerations of the Gregories 
and others, who claimed to rule over kings, 
to give away crowns, and to have the manage- 
ment of things of the earth as well as those of 
heaven." 

He began the compulsory action, and his 
astute nephew — knighted as " Defender of the 
Faith" in Rome, on Christmas, 1850, in one 
of the grandest displays of the Church — has 
brought it to an end/ 
8-* • 



90 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 



CHAPTER XV. 

JtOME A PEKSECVT1NG POWER. 

BY A. B. C. 

OF the five chief institutions of Romanism, 
a full inside view can be secured only at 
Rome. They are all clustered here. This 
is the grand centre. The heart of the system 
is here, and these institutions are its arterial 
organization. 

"As St. Peter vanquished the first heresi- 
archs on no other spot than Rome/' said the old 
Dominican inquisitor Caraffk, " so must the 
successor of St. Peter overcome all the here- 
sies of the world in Rome." Everywhere 
else, from the intelligence of the people or 
the tolerance of another faith, it meets with 
hindrances to its full operation. 

1. Here, the sovereign pontiff, with his 
triple crown, sits on his golden throne, the 

90 



FOR THE TRUTH. 91 

despotic and infallible head of the Church 
militant. Pius IX., at first, would have been 
a reformer had reform been practicable. His 
accession was hailed by the Italians as the 
dawn of a brighter day. He introduced 
some constitutional elements into the govern- 
ment. He granted a chamber of deputies 
and a lay ministry. But the cardinals saw 
the tendency, and resisted him. They ar- 
rested legitimate measures which arose in the 
chamber, and overrode the ministry. The 
crisis gave him an opportunity to relax the 
oppressive rule of the Romish Church, and 
to signalize himself in the progress of civil 
and religious liberty. It was in his heart to 
do so. But he lacked courage. He was not 
the man for his time, and he fled from a peo- 
ple that then loved him as intensely as they 
afterward hated him. He refused their re- 
peated invitations to return and carry on a 
government of his own projecting; and he 
employed a foreign soldiery to bombard his 
way back to a throne on which he has since 
sat, firmly or feebly, according to the number 



92 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

of alien troops by which he has been sur- 
rounded. 

What a spectacle ! The professed vicege- 
rent of Him who said, " My kingdom is not 
of this world," battling in blood for a tem- 
poral dominion ! The assumed representa- 
tive of the Prince of Peace maintaining his 
sway at the point of the bayonet and in seas 
of blood ! 

2. Here is the college of cardinals, that 
rearguard of absolutism, that impure junto 
of misanthropy, tyranny and sensuality. It 
numbers seventy when full, fifty-six of whom 
are cardinal priests, twenty-four cardinal dea- 
cons and six cardinal bishops. The pope 
appoints the cardinals, and they in turn elect 
the pope, and act as his counsellors at home 
and legates abroad. They assist him in the 
celebration of mass, and one officiates as his 
prime minister. Nominally, they are subject 
to him, but in reality they are his rulers. 

Examples of nobleness and philanthropy, 
doubtless, there are among them. But ac- 
cording to common fame and reliable testi- 



FOR THE TRUTH. 93 

mony, these are the exceptions. The revolu- 
tion of 1848 brought several of them, for a 
time, under the protection of our Minister at 
Rome, and into the familiar interchanges of 
thought and feeling, disclosing a social and 
moral debasement the farthest removed from 
what the Gospel requires in its teachers, and 
which would blast the fame of any Christian 
minister in our land. 

3. The Propaganda di Fide, founded by 
Gregory XV. in 1622, and further endowed 
by Urban VIII., is also at Rome. It is 
situated at the southern extremity of the 
Piazza di Spagna. Its annual income at the 
close of the last century was three hundred 
thousand Roman crowns. Its printing-office 
was one of the finest in the world, with type 
for publishing in twenty-seven languages. 

The French Revolution swept over it, and 
its pupils were scattered, its funds appropri- 
ated to other purposes and its founts of type 
carried to Paris. In 1818 the college was 
reopened, and it now numbers from seventy 
to a hundred choice students. 



94 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

The scholastic dress is a long black cassock, 
bound with a red girdle, and two broad rib- 
bons hanging from the shoulders behind. 
The students are entirely supported by the 
institution, even to the expense of travel to 
Rome and back to their native country. 
Each one in return gives a pledge that he 
will devote his life to the dissemination of 
the Catholic faith. 

At the annual exhibition in 1851 parts 
were performed in fifty different languages. 
This institution presents an illustration of 
some of the comprehensive educational prin- 
ciples of Romanism. It disdains the odious 
distinctions of color which prevail in some 
branches of the Protestant Church. The 
blackest Ethiopian stands here on a level 
with the fairest of the Anglo-Saxon or the 
Latin race. It collects the materials upon 
which it works from every nation, tribe and 
tongue, and stimulates them to the greatest 
zeal and energy by the highest admiration 
and praise. 

The Propaganda is the great heart of the 



FOR THE TRUTH. 95 

whole masterly missionary system of the pa- 
pacy. By the multiform orders of monks 
and nuns, as through so many arteries and 
veins, noiselessly it sends out and receives 
back its vital fluid. The whole world is 
distinctly mapped out in its halls, and the 
chief points of influence minutely marked. 
A kind of telegraphic communication is es- 
tablished with the remotest stations in South 
Africa and Siberia, and with almost every 
nook in our own land, to which the myrmi- 
dons of papal power look with the most of 
hope, and also the most of fear. It is 
through means of this modern galvanic bat- 
tery, set up in the Vatican, that the Church 
of Rome has gained its power of ubiquity — 
has made itself wellnigh omnipotent as well 
as omnipresent. 

The same forestalling, stimulating principle 
is applied in the training of monastic females. 
At vespers, one Sunday evening, in the 
Church Trinita di Monte, I witnessed a ser- 
vice by the " white nuns," illustrating this 
feature of Romanism. 



96 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

They were girls, from eight to sixteen, 
with blue frocks and white veils falling upon 
the shoulders behind and nearly to the feet. 
They entered the church from the adjoining 
convent in a procession of two and two, ap- 
proached the altar, slowly bending the knees 
almost to the floor, and bowing in graceful 
homage to the picture of the Virgin. Then 
rising they turned, each to the opposite side 
of the space, knelt again, rose and seated 
themselves. The service consisted of chant- 
ings and responses, genuflections and demon- 
strations, after which the nuns retired, bow- 
ing to the altar as when they entered. In 
all these ecclesiastical gymnastics they had 
been trained to the utmost exactness and 
gracefulness of manner. 

But why are these girls, at this tender age, 
taken out of the family relations, and fore- 
doomed to a life with which they can have 
no natural affinities? Why this unseemly 
haste to bind them to this single and repul- 
sive life ? God made man male and female, 
and in the unity of this dualism is developed 



FOE THE TRUTH. 97 

the whole humanity. The Church of Rome, 
in respect to the clergy, contravenes this 
primal order. Not a few of the ills which 
afflict fair Italy arise from this initial vice of 
Romanism — the celibacy of the priests. They 
are the teachers and rulers of the land. But 
they are not allowed the family ties of hus- 
band and father, and consequently lose the 
humanizing, elevating influences which God 
has connected with these hallowed relations. 

4. Another characteristic institution of the 
Romish Church, which has its centre at 
Rome, is the Company of Jesus, or the Jesuits. 
The general of the order resides at Rome, 
wielding a sceptre second in power only to 
that of the pope. To the three vows of pov- 
erty, chastity and monastic obedience, com- 
mon to other orders, Loyola added a fourth, 
peculiar to the members of his society. It 
was the vow of obedience to the pope in the 
service of the Church, without charge for 
their support. This procured them their in- 
stitution from Paul III. in 1540. In nine 



98 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

years they acquired a superiority to all hu- 
man control, except that of the pontiff. 

The constitution of the society is essentially 
military and most rigidly despotic, all power 
being lodged with the general. In his hands 
all are to be as " a staff," or " as a dead body." 
It was the boast of Ignatius that he wished 
for only one month to secure this conquest. 
The achievement is accomplished by means 
of a manual called the " Spiritual Exercises." 
" These," says Father de Ravignan, " have 
created the society, maintain it, preserve it 
and give itiife." Hence this book is placed 
at the threshold of the order. 

The victim sits and stands, and sighs and 
groans, and weeps and reflects, and prays, all 
by a prescribed rule. In this w T ay he is 
broken to the will of the ghostly father. 
The man is then lost in the order. Every 
power of body and mind wears its chains. 
His last act of freedom is his choice of this 
perpetual bondage. Says Loyola, " If the 
authority declares that which seems to you 
white is black, affirm that it is black." 



FOB THE TRUTH. 99 

From the life of free thoughts and free 
words, and of an advancing Christianity, 
men are thus taken into the close atmosphere 
of the tombs, to be as corpses among the 
dead. The order is a complete despotism 
over the mind, conscience, will and estates of 
its members. Espionage and inquisitions 
reign in all grades and offices of the company, 
except the highest. All are watched by all ; 
and all give account to the general of the 
order, who gives account to none. 

5. Finally, the central enginery of the 
Inquisition still works with a secret though 
somewhat abated malignancy. This is the 
main defensive expedient of the papacy, de- 
vised by Innocent III. in the twelfth cen- 
tury for the conviction and punishment of 
heretics, and renewed at the Reformation. 
Its processes are all secret as the grave, and 
its cells full of dead men's bones. Within 
the enclosures of this " Court of Death/' are 
kept the "iron shears" of this infallible 
Church, with which she is wont to pare the 
faith of men into agreement with her canons 



100 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

and her catechism. Here is the statue of the 
blessed Virgin, with her spike bosom and 
her iron arms, with which this step-mother 
was wont to receive her wayward children to 
her fond embrace. Here, too, are the huge 
"keys" of St. Peter, and the deep dungeons 
and massive doors within which she locks up 
poor temptation -tried pilgrims, to keep them 
unspotted from the world. 

Behind all, upon his bloody throne, sits the 
dark-visaged inquisitor. His " bones are 
marrowless," his blood "is cold," he has "a 
lean and hungry look," and is filled " top-full 
of direst cruelty." For this inhuman work 
a laic must not be taken, for he may have 
some social bands or some " dregs of con- 
science, some milk o ? human kindness," wdiich 
may make him a coward. 

At its reinstitution in 1542, six cardinals 
constituted the first court, as Inquisitors 
General ; of whom Caraffa and Toledo were 
the chief. Its powers were absolute, save the 
right of pardon reserved to the pope. By its 
rules no respect was to be shown to " prince 



FOR THE TRUTH. 101 

or prelate/' to age or sex. The suspected 
were followed by the utmost rigour of prose- 
cution. 

The fourth rule forbids any sort of toler- 
ance towards heretics, and especially toward 
Calvinists. Children are compelled to be 
informers against parents, and parents against 
children, husbands against wives, and wives 
against husbands. The Duchess of Ferrara, 
except for the Salic law heiress to the throne 
of France, was accused by her own husband, 
and shut out from all sympathy. " The 
mountains are between her and her friends/' 
said her keeper; "she mingles her wine with 
tears." 

Thus the most concealed germ of free 
thought is hunted out of society and of the soul 
by the disguised or open emissaries of the 
inquisition. " Dishonour of the reason/' says 
Schiller, " and the murder of the soul consti- 
tute its vows. Its instruments are terror and 
disgrace. Every passion is in its pay, and its 
snares lie in every joy of life. Even solitude 
is not secure from its espionage, and the fear 
9 * 



102 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

of its omnipresence holds freedom fettered, 
even in the depths of the soul. All the 
instincts of humanity it has trodden down 
under the feet of credulity, and to it have been 
made to yield all those bonds which men 
esteem holiest. All claims upon his race are, 
for the heretic, disallowed. For, by the least 
infraction of the law of Mother Church, he has 
destroyed his humanity. A modest doubt as 
to the infallibility of the pope is esteemed 
parricide. Even the lifeless body of the 
heretic is cursed. No destiny can rescue its 
victims, and the grave itself is no refuge from 
its terrible arms." 

During the revolution in. 1848 the doors 
of this infernal institution were torn open, 
and its mysteries of iniquity disclosed to the 
gaze of an indignant humanity. In the 
Chamber of Archives were piled up the 
records of its dark proceedings. Over the 
door to one apartment was written, " No one 
enters this room except on pain of excom- 
munication." It was the Judgment Hall, 
where the fate of thousands has been sealed 



FOE THE TEUTH. 103 

by the diabolical inquisitors. In an adjoin- 
ing room was found a trap-door, through 
which the condemned passes into eternity. 
The pit is cylindrical in form and eighty feet 
deep, within which the terrific engines of 
death performed their demoniacal work. 

The strictest literary censorship, which is a 
part of the criminal jurisprudence, is extended 
by the inquisitors to every department of 
science, archaeology, philosophy, history, poli- 
tical economy and theology. ISTo original 
investigation is tolerated divergent from the 
prevalent orthodoxy. In 1543, Carafta ordered 
that no book, whatever its contents, whether 
old or new, should be printed without permis- 
sion from the inquisitors. All booksellers were 
required to submit a catalogue of their stock, 
and a few years after an index of forbidden 
books was published and still continues to be. 

In 1851, I copied the following decretum 
from the door-post of St. Peter's, with an 
appended list of prohibited books : 

u A Decretum of the Sacred Congregation 
of the Holy Eoman Church of Cardinals by 



104 MAETYBS AND SUFFEKERS 

our most holy Lord, Pius IX., in which we 
have condemned and will condemn, have pro- 
scribed and will proscribe, the following 
works," 

Then comes a list of the books, among 
which are — 

A Historical Analysis of Christian Civili- 
zation. 

Mysteries of the Inquisition and other 
Secret Societies of Spain. 

Letters on the Egyptian Hieroglyphics. 

"No one shall dare to publish, read or 
keep in any place or idiom, any one of these 
condemned books, under the penalties stated 
in the ' Index of Vicious Books/ " 

" That a book, in worse condition than a 
peccant soul," said John Milton, "should be 
made to stand before a jury ere it be born 
to the world, and undergo, yet in darkness, 
the judgment of Rhadamanth and his col- 
leagues, ere it can pass the ferry backward 
into light, was never heard before till that 
mysterious iniquity, provoked and troubled 
at the first entrance of reformation, sought out 



FOR THE TEUTH. 105 

new limbos and new hells, wherein they 
might include our books also within the num- 
ber of their damned. " 

But there is one object on which these 
mitred ecclesiastics look with more intense 
anxiety than upon any other. They fear it 
more and hate it more. It is the Bible. This 
they regard as the fomenter of all their diffi- 
culties. This occasions agitations and discus- 
sions among the people, and kindles in them 
dangerous desires to think for themselves, 
and to know what God teaches. Here are 
the seeds of free schools and free thoughts, a 
free press and a free government. The Bible 
has made England and America free. Hence 
the Romanists proscribe it and burn it, and 
exile, incarcerate or burn those who read it. 

The massive strength of the Eomish hier- 
archy is found in the great institutions of 
which we have taken a glimpse — the Papal 
See, the College of Cardinals, the Propaganda 
di Fide, the Order of Jesus and the Inquisi- 
tion. It involves the highest constructive 
skill, and is the fruit of twelve hundred years 



106 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

of experiments. But just here too, is its 
weakness; because mere human sagacity is 
always weak, and must, in the end, prove 
futile against Divine Providence and the 
Bible. 

In a certain mythology of the ancients, the 
heavens are supported by the earth, the earth 
by an elephant, the elephant by a turtle, while 
the turtle stands on his own feet. By a similar 
series of supports the Inquisition stands on 
the Propaganda, the Propaganda on the cardi- 
nals, the cardinals on the pope, and the 
pope on nothing. 

As a spiritual despotism it must remain as 
it is or fall. Reform is impracticable. Lu- 
ther and Melancthon sought this earnestly, 
boldly, but ineffectually. They did not break 
from the Church until, for their efforts at 
reform, she cut them off as guilty of damnable 
heresy. Then the die was cast. They must 
protest and fight for the truth, or perish. 

The papal anathema roused the Saxon 
monk. " You will burn me" he says, " for 
answer to the God's message which I strive 



FOR THE TRUTH. 107 

to bring you. I take your bull as a parch- 
ment lie, and burn that" And, proceeding 
with it to to the east gate of Wittemburg, he 
kindled a fire which illumined the whole North 
of Europe. " Confute me by proofs of Scrip- 
ture," said he, " at the Diet of Worms, or 
else by plain, just argument, otherwise I can- 
not recant. Here I stand — I can do nothing 
else, God help me !" 

Thus the battle commenced — the great bat- 
tle of Armageddon, of truth against error, 
light against darkness, Christ against Anti- 
christ. At this point the papacy closes the 
breviary, and 

" Opes the bleeding testament of purple war." 

To the side of truth and freedom gather the 
faithful and the free from every clime. They 
are inspired by the voices of the slain wit- 
nesses under the altar, saying, " How^ long, 
Lord God Almighty, shall we not be aveng- 
ed ?" And their final victorious requiem 
shall be in the language of the Seer of Patrnos, 

" Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen. 



108 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

" For her sins have reached into heaven, 
and God hath rewarded her iniquities." 

" Alas ! alas ! that great city Babylon, that 
mighty city ! for in one hour is thy judgment 
come." 



FOE THE TRUTH. 109 



CHAPTER XVI 

ItOTTIS MONTREVEJL, OR THE HUGTTENOT MAR- 
TYRS. 

BY MITA LAUDER. 

A SERENE Sabbath in June. The sun 
looks down calmly from his sapphire 
throne upon beautiful France, now bleeding 
with the bitter persecution of God's people — 
the despised Huguenots. There, in his pleas- 
ant light, stands the little village of Mire- 
court. 

A neat temple nestles in the foliage, and 
through the quaint old streets, and across the 
little green squares, and past the rows of 
freshly-trimmed shade trees, are walking a 
goodly company in holiday attire. There are 
old men in small clothes, with shining knee- 
buckles and three-cornered hats, and young 
men in gay waistcoats and glittering breast- 

10 109 



110 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

pins. There are peasant women in black 
jackets, short scarlet petticoats and tall, clear- 
starched muslin head-dresses ; and pretty 
grisettes in coquettish black silk aprons and 
jaunty lace caps ; while children of all sizes 
are scattered here and there, as buds among 
the flowers. Only a small number of faces 
peep out from bonnets, for in this little dis- 
trict there are not many families of wealth. 

One of these few bonneted women would 
instantly have attracted your attention ; she was 
slightly below the middle age, with a calm, pale 
face and soft hazel eyes. By her side, with a 
hymn-book in his hand, is a tall, erect man 
of benevolent countenance. Before her walks 
a fine-looking lad of eighteen, leading two 
little girls, and behind her two round-faced 
boys, who might have been, the one twelve 
and the other fourteen years of age. This 
group constitutes the Montrevel family, one 
of the most respectable in the place and uni- 
versally beloved. 

All these people, from different directions, 
are drawing toward one point — the modest 



FOR THE TRUTH. Ill 

church hidden among the trees. When the 
Montrevel family approached the entrance, 
Louis drew back the little girls for his parents 
to precede him, and then following with his 
brothers, they all passed in and sat down on 
one of the benches, Louis helping his twin 
sisters to mount a seat each side of him. A 
pleasant sight it was to look upon monsieur 
and madame with their little flock, and many 
an eye dwelt kindly on the flaxen curly-haired 
Agnes and Marie. 

The introductory services are over, and the 
aged pastor rises to announce his text : 

" Peace I leave with you, my peace I give 
unto you, not as the world giveth, give I unto 
you" 

As he stands there, his silver locks flowing 
over his shoulders, and his mild blue eye 
lighted with heavenly fire, a ray of light 
falling on his forehead crowns him with an 
aureole, likening him to one of the old pic- 
tured saints of Fra Angelico. 

" My dear children," he says, " we must 
all abide as did the Israelites, with our sandals 



112 MART YES AND SUFFERERS 

on, our loins girded and our lamps trimmed 
and burning. Our lot is cast in a compara- 
tively obscure part of the Lord's vineyard. 
And as yet we have known but little of the 
terrible sufferings our brethren and sisters 
have endured since the revocation of King 
Henry's edict. Bat when the bitter cup comes 
to us, as come without doubt it will, may we 
drink it submissively ! I pray that in the 
day of adversity not one of my dear flock 
may be left to deny his Master." 

Hardly had he uttered these words when 
the distant sound of cavalry sent a shudder 
through the assembly, for the poor Huguenots 
had good reason to know w r hat this portended. 

" I will look unto the hills whence my help 
corneth," said the good man, lifting up his 
eyes to heaven. Then extending his arms 
toward his beloved people, he continued : 

" Fear not, little flock ; it is your Father's 
good pleasure to give you the kingdom." 

"In the w T orld ye shall have tribulation; 
but be of good cheer ; I have overcome the 
world." 



SK 






1 





PL 



Martyrs and Sufferers. 



Page 113. 



FOR THE TRUTH. 113 

More and more distinct grew the tramp of 
the horsemen, and in spite of Father Legarme's 
cheering words the people were greatly agi- 
tated. Some fled in terror, while others hud- 
dled together at the foot of the altar. 

On came the dragoons — dashing with savage 
yells through the quiet streets, across the 
green sward — on toward that temple of sin- 
cere worshippers. In less time than it has 
taken to describe the scene the Lord's house 
is filled and surrounded. Mounting the pul- 
pit, his sword clattering on the stairs, the 
captain unrolled a parchment with its large 
seals of state, and read a proclamation, the sub- 
stance of which was that his royal majesty had 
appointed dragonnades for the recovery of all 
heretics to the Most Holy Catholic Church. 

" In accordance with this proclamation/' he 
continued, "you are all hereby summoned to 
repair to the cathedral, where the priests who 
accompany the regiment will receive your 
recantation ; and afterward you will celebrate 
the mass. ; If any refuse to obey, upon them 
will the dragoons be quartered." 
10 * 



114 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

Then addressing the soldiers with a shout, 
" Now, men, to your work !" there followed a 
scene of indescribable terror and distress. 
Some fled ; others were dragged through the 
streets into the cathedral, up to the very altars, 
while a few, sorely tempted, hastily signed 
their abjuration, to repent of it ever after. 

The houses of the recusants were filled with 
these emissaries of the Church. All the tor- 
ments that human or satanic ingenuity could 
devise were made use of to force back these 
wanderers to the arms of their cruel mother. 
The poor victims were hung up by their feet 
or the hair of their head ; and as if that were not 
enough, were at the same time nearly suffo- 
cated by the burning of damp straw in their 
cells. They were plunged into water and 
drawn out with a bare escape from drowning. 
Strong drink was poured down their throats 
through a funnel till they were intoxicated, 
in which condition they were induced to re- 
cant. By the ceaseless vigilance of sentinels, 
for a whole week at a time they were pre- 
vented from securing one minute's sleep. 



FOE THE TRUTH. 115 

Women were cruelly disfigured in the face, 
and dragged through the streets by the hair 
of their heads, and otherwise shamefully mal- 
treated. Thus in every possible way were 
they harassed and tortured, while, if they 
attempted to flee the country, they were pur- 
sued, and if caught punished as malefactors. 
But the refinement of these cruelties was the 
tearing from the arms of their parents chil- 
dren of the tenderest age, and committing them 
to the charge of that cold-blooded stepmother 
— the papacy. 

Upon the Montrevel family had been quar- 
tered thirty of these remorseless dragoons — 
an infliction, in comparison with which the 
Egyptian plagues were a dispensation of 
mercy. There seemed to be no species of 
wanton or brutal violence which these holy 
" booted missionaries" omitted from their 
means of grace for the conversion of heretics. 
After various ineffectual efforts with Mon- 
sieur Montrevel, one of these fiends exclaimed 
with an oath, " You shall swallow the host," 
and opening his mouth with a bayonet, another 



116 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

of the hellish crew put in the host, which 
together they forced down his throat. 

As Louis, the eldest son, witnessed this 
atrocious act, he started to rush upon the 
monsters, but an appealing look from his 
mother and the recollection of his own impo- 
tence arrested his motion. At this moment, 
a Jesuit father, entering, angrily addressed the 
heretic. 

" We will yet find means to overcome your 
obstinacy;" and nodding to the ruffians, he 
added, u take him away." 

As they were dragging him from the room, 
he cast a parting glance at his wife and son, 
saying, " Remember the promise, 6 Be thou 
faithful unto death, and I will give thee a 
crown of life/" 

To make sure of the lambs, these ravening 
wolves then proceeded to tear from the broken- 
hearted wife her two younger sons and the 
pretty twins, little Agnes and Marie, whose 
pleas to stay with their dear mamma might 
have moved a heart of stone. 

Late the same day, as the dragoons, half 



FOR THE TRUTH. 117 

drunk, had thrown themselves down to sleep, 
Louis went out to draw water. Hastily 
following, his mother beckoned him into the 
granary. 

" Ah, my son, you must leave me instantly." 

" I cannot, dear mother." 

" There is no help for it, Louis. Your 
father will be murdered, and the little ones 
are all torn from me. But you may live to 
serve the dear Master. You will find means 
to escape to Holland and then to England, 
where, it may be, you can prepare yourself to 
be a minister of the blessed gospel. Perhaps 
some of your friends will go with you; but 
there must be no delay. And here is a little 
money for you." 

As Louis still hesitated, she added, earnestly; 

" For you to remain is torture and death, 
or, worse still, the dreadful galleys. For you 
will not forswear your religion." 

" Never, unless God forsakes me." 

" Then farewell, my precious child. And 
may God bless you !" 

Louis hastily flung himself on his mother's 



118 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

neck, and without another word set forth on 
his exile. As he came to a bend in the road, 
he turned and took a last glimpse of his 
beloved home. How attractive it looked in 
the sunset-light, with its pleasant parterre, its 
nice gravel-walks, its neat rows of trees, and 
that indescribable air that invests home with 
such a sacred charm ! 

" It will soon be in ruins," he mournfully 
exclaimed. But choking down his grief, he 
went on his way. 

Two of his friends, Andrew and Henry 
Oster, lived with an uncle who was a Catho- 
lic, and whose house, consequently, was free 
from the hated dragoons. Being one of the 
easy sort, he did not molest his heretical 
friends, and if he happened to meet either of 
the boys carrying provisions away, was dis- 
creetly silent. They were, in fact, carried to 
a secret cavern, where a few families, having 
managed to elude the vigilance of the spies, 
had hid themselves, taking with them their 
beloved pastor, Father Legarme. 

Mr. Oster had this very day assured 



FOR THE TRUTH. 119 

Andrew and Henry that there was no safety 
for them but in flight. So Louis found them 
prepared. 

" And let us try to get off Father Legarme 
too, for these wretches pour out their hottest 
vials on the ministers." 

Leaving the friends on their way to the 
cavern, we will go back to the home from 
which Louis had been driven forth, and 
where Madame Montrevel remained alone 
with the ruthless invaders. Innumerable 
cruelties were practiced upon her to make her 
renounce her religion. But in vain. Having 
consumed all the provisions that had been 
stored up, pillaged the premises of everything 
valuable and demolished the house even to 
the foundation, the savages dragged the faith- 
ful woman before the Duke de la Pontiac. 

" She shall submit !" exclaimed the duke, 
enraged at her obstinacy. 

And ordering pen and paper, one of his 
zealous servants seized her hand and com- 
pelled her to sign her abjuration. 

" My Master will pardon this offending 



120 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

hand," said she, looking the duke calmly in 
the face, a for my heart is not guilty of this 
base denial." 

Is it possible, we are constrained to ask, 
that the most bigoted zealot should have at- 
tached any weight to such conversions? Yet 
most of the converts reported so triumphantly 
to the king were of this description. It does 
not surprise us that the good queen of Swe- 
den, though a devoted adherent of the pa- 
pacy, should write as she did to the French 
ambassador at Stockholm : 

" I will frankly avow that I am not quite 
persuaded of the success of this great design ; 
and that I cannot rejoice at it as an affair 
very advantageous to our holy religion. Mil- 
itary men are strange apostles. I consider 
them more likely to kill, to ravish and to 
plunder than to persuade; and, in fact, ac- 
counts beyond doubt inform us that they 
fulfil their mission entirely in their own 
mode. I pity the people abandoned to their 
discretion. I sympathize with so many ruined 
families, so many respectable persons reduced 



FOE THE TKUTH. 121 

to beggary, and I cannot look upon what 
is now passing in France without com- 
passion." 

And to the Cardinal Azolino she feelingly 
exclaims : 

" I am overwhelmed with grief when I 
think of all the innocent blood which a blind 
fanaticism causes daily to flow. France ex- 
ercises without remorse or fear the most bar- 
barous persecution upon the dearest and most 

industrious portion of her people 

Every time I contemplate the atrocious tor- 
ments which have been inflicted upon the 
Protestants, my heart throbs and my eyes are 
filled with tears." 

Even Madame de Maintenon, that zealous 
renegade from Protestantism, frankly admit- 
ted, " I think that all these conversions are 
not sincere ; but at least the children will be 
Romanists." 

Louis Montrevel and his two young friends 
failed to persuade Father Legarme to share 
their flight. 
11 



122 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

" My poor services belong to ray scattered 
flock." 

" But the horrid wolves will scent you out 
and devour you," exclaimed Andrew, impet- 
uously. 

" Not before God's time, my son. And if 
I am accounted worthy of a martyr's death, 
he will carry me through it." 

Having exhorted the lads to remain true 
to their faith, whatever trials they might en- 
counter, the good pastor prayed fervently with 
them, and then, having received his parting 
benediction, they set out on their journey. 

Poor Louis was sadly cast down : 

" I feel as if I had done wrong in leaving 
my mother." 

'■ But the brutes would have torn you from 
her. Oh how I wish the lightning would 
blast them!" 

" Hush, Andrew ! have you forgotten how 
the disciples were rebuked for wishing to call 
down fire from heaven ?" 

" But I can't help hating the wretches, and 
what is more, I don't want to." 



FOR THE TKUTH. 123 

" Christ did not hate his persecutors," said 
Louis. 

" Well, maybe it's wrong, and yet I don't 
see how flesh and blood can do any better. 
It's all sham, the pretended zeal of the dra- 
goons — or dragons, as they ought to be called. 
I wonder if poor France will ever be free 
from her oppressors? Oh that we had a 
father William to fight our battles for us, as 
those Dutchmen had ! M 

Looking round to discover why Louis did 
not reply, he saw the tears rolling down his 
cheeks. 

" My sweet little Agnes and Marie !" was 
his explanation. u How they will grieve 
themselves to death ! The dear boys too — 
and my noble father and mother. How can 
I bear V?" 

" Cheer up," said Henry, " for there's no 
knowing what may happen. We may have 
another king who will restore our edict, and 
then what a flocking in there will be from all 
quarters ! But, Andrew, suppose we shouldn't 
get off, after all?" 



124 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

" The galleys perhaps," replied his brother, 
with a shudder. 

"We could, both of us, bear that better 
than Louis, for we have roughed it more and 
are stouter than he." 

" Our heavenly Father can give us strength 
to endure," said Louis ; " let us ask his 
help." 

And kneeling down in the woods, they 
earnestly implored divine strength and guid- 
ance. 

On reaching Paris, the boys found shelter 
for the night in a Huguenot family in the 
outskirts of the gay city. 

" If you can only escape the notice of the 
guards," said their host, as his wife was put- 
ting up a lunch for the travellers, " and once 
set your feet in Charleroi, you will be under 
the protection of the Dutch garrison. There's 
no knowing how soon the rest of us will have 
to flee. But keep up, lads, for we shall reach 
heaven all the sooner for our persecutions, 
and thank God there'll be no dragoons there !" 

Cordially shaking hands with their host 



FOR THE TEUTH. 125 

and hostess, the boys once more set forth on 
their exile. They had not travelled many 
hours before they caught the sound of distant 
troops. Leaping the hedges, they had no 
sooner reached a place of concealment in the 
woods than a company of dragoons rode furi- 
ously by. It was not till long after the last 
sound of the retreating horsemen had died 
away that they ventured again into the high 
road. They also encountered other perils, in 
which their presence of mind alone saved them. 

- • I wish we dared sing," said Louis, " for 
I am sure it would keep up our spirits." 

"We can recite hymns, any way," replied 
Henry, " and that is next best." 

" I have no memory of that sort," observed 
Andrew, " but I will be your attentive audi- 
ence." 

So Louis and Henry took turns in reciting 
Huguenot hymns, while Andrew performed 
the part of listener. 

" I always loved those hymns," he said, 
" but somehow they seem sweeter than ever 
before." 



126 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

" So they do to me," responded Louis, 
" and I suppose it is because we are in circum- 
stances to feel the need of the consolations 
they breathe. I think we should also find 
passages of Scripture more precious, for the 
same reason. Let us make the experiment." 

Having repeated a number of verses, they 
proceeded to talk of their early life. 

u This is delightful," said Henry, " even 
if we are exiles." 

" The more delightful on that very ac- 
count," replied both the boys in the same 
breath. 

" I think we had better consult a little 
about our plans," said Louis. " What do you 
mean to do, boys, if we get safely out of France ?" 

" I am going to learn some trade," replied 
Andrew. 

" And I have yet to decide," said Henry, 
" whether I shall be a farmer or merchant. 
But you, Louis?" 

" I mean to be a minister, as my mother 
always desired." 

With the mention of that beloved name he 



FOR THE TRUTH. 127 

was suddenly overcome, and for a time no 
one broke the silence. But at length Andrew 
said : 

" I dare say your mother will be one of your 
hearers when your hair is as white as Father 
Legarme's, and you lean over the desk as he 
does, as if ready to take all your flock to your 
bosom. Dear, good man ! I wonder if we shall 
ever see him again ?" 

" Certainly, we shall— in heaven, if not 
before." 

Thus beguiling the way, they travelled on 
in fancied security. Stopping to lunch, they 
heard some travellers discussing the dragoons. 

" I hear they are at La Platte on their mis- 
sionary work," remarked one of them with a 
sneer. 

" Yes," replied the other, "and woe to those 
whom they catch trying to escape !" 

Now the boys knew that La Platte was 
near the boundary-line, and that it was a town 
they were to pass through in approaching 
Charleroi. In a sudden alarm they concluded 
to deviate from their intended route, and 



128 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

approach their place of destination by a cir- 
cuitous road. 

Fatal decision ! which even before the day 
was through they began to regret. 

" I fear we have been very foolish, and only 
put our heads into the lion's mouth/' said 
Andrew, after they had walked some time in 
silence. " Did you observe that ill-favoured 
man that looked at us so sharply while we 
were lunching this morning?" 

" That I did ; and I have been afraid of 
encountering him ever since." 

Entering a hostelrie, they were seized with 
a dismal foreboding on beholding that same 
ugly face appearing at another door. But 
they concealed their alarm, and called for 
supper and lodging, meaning to escape in the 
night. They were just partaking of their 
frugal meal when the dreaded man, who had 
stepped out, reappeared, accompanied by four 
gendarmes, and pointing to the lads, they 
were speedily arrested and brought before the 
governor, who, after a brief examination, com- 
mitted them to prison. Sending to Paris for 



FOR THE TRUTH. 129 

orders, he received a rescript requiring them 
to be brought to trial, not only for heresy, 
but also for being found on the frontiers with- 
out a passport. It contained directions, how- 
ever, that the cur6 should labour for their con- 
version, and, if successful, that they should be 
pardoned and sent home. 

The officer to whose charge they were com- 
mitted, though a Catholic, did not believe in 
persecution. Reporting to his prisoners the 
rescript, he added : 

" Now, boys, your own consciences must be 
your guide. All I have to say is, that if you 
recant you will be pardoned ; but if not, you 
will probably be sent to the galleys." 

" Come what may, we will never betray 
our faith," answered Louis, without a mo- 
ment's hesitation. 

" Then the Lord be merciful to you !" 

The following morning the cure commenced 
his pious labours. But it did not take him long 
to discover that, whatever arguments he might 
advance, the boys invariably managed to get the 
better of him. The oftener he was discomfited. 



130 MART YES AND SUFFERERS 

however, the greater became his desire for 
success. For he reasoned within himself: 

"These boys have so much pluck that if 
they were only on the right side, they could 
argue down multitudes of heretics as I can 
never do." 

Besides, he had become really interested in 
them, particularly in Louis. 

" It's of no use to discuss any longer, for 
the rogues have used me up. And they've 
read all my books; no, they haven't," he 
exclaimed, as a sudden thought flashed on 
him, " for there's the very best of them they 
haven't even looked at."' 

And a smile dawned on his face as he 
thought of its fair pages. After pondering a 
few moments in silence, he broke out : 

" Yes, yes, that will do it ; and if one 
yields, all will. She has become greatly 
interested in their conversion from hearing 
my reports. And I'll set out the case in the 
morning so as to move her feelings. I don't 
see any objection to the scheme. The Mon- 
trevel family is very respectable, and Louis 



FOR THE TEUTH. 131 

is a handsome fellow, and a good one too, as 
one can easily see, in spite of his damnable 
heresy. And for that his parents are more 
to blame than he." 

So he went to sleep with his head full of 
this new and subtle style of argument. 

The next day the officer ushered into their 
cell a young and pretty girl, bearing a basket 
of grapes from her uncle, the cure. 

"Sit down and talk with these prisoners a 
bit," said the officer, " for they are separated 
from their friends, and know not what is to 
befal them." 

The damsel had a tender heart, and, though 
a devout Catholic, she pitied these misguided 
heretics. So in a friendly way she began to 
ask questions, happening first to address 
Andrew. 

" My brother and I are orphans," the lad 
replied, " and have no brothers or sisters ; but 
Louis has left a great many friends, besides 
two of the sweetest little sisters you ever saw." 

" Tell me about them, please." 

And as Louis, touched by her interest, was 



132 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

drawn to speak out of a full heart, she sat 
listening with flushed cheek and tearful eyes : 

" Oh, that I could persuade you to return 
to the Mother Church !" 

" Do you think the means she is employ- 
ing particularly suited to win us?" 

" I cannot tell. I always shudder when I 
hear about the dragonnades, but uncle says it 
is what God requires." 

" But we don't believe in such a God." 

Louise crossed herself quickly : " I shall 
say prayers for you to our holy Mother." 

" And on our part," exclaimed Louis, 
warmly, " we will entreat the Lord Jesus 
Christ to lead you into that truth for which 
we are ready to die." 

" But you must not. I cannot believe the 
blessed Virgin requires such a sacrifice. How 
I wish Father La Sallier were here, for he is 
more learned than my uncle, and I think he 
could convince you of your errors." 

" Not while the holy Word is treasured up 
in our hearts." 

" Ah ! there was the beginning of your sin- — 



FOR THE TRUTH. 133 

the daring to read and think for yourselves. I 
shall have to say Ave Marias for you all night." 

"What do you think of her?" asked An- 
drew, when the bright apparition had van- 
ished. 

" I think she is too good to remain a 
Eoraan Catholic, and I shall pray for her 
conversion as earnestly as she does for ours." 

For several successive days the maiden con- 
tinued to visit the prison, bringing fresh 
offerings of fruits and flowers. Not only 
this, but she also brought books which she 
hoped would convince them of their errors. 
And after each visit she went home more 
intent on their conversion. 

u Which of the lads do you say the most 
prayers for ?" inquired her uncle one day. 

" I say a great many for them all, but the 
most, dear uncle, for Louis Montrevel." 

" Why for him ?" 

" Because he is so unhappy about his sweet 
sisters." 

" What wouldst thou give to win him to 
the Church ?" 

12 



134 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

" Everything I have in the world." 

" And yourself too, ma fille ?" 

The girl opened her innocent eyes wide 
upon the cure. 

" I mean would'st thou marry him, if that 
would bring him back?" 

The bloom on her face deepened as she 
replied, 

" But, uncle, he has not a thought of any 
such thing." 

" That does not prove, silly girl, that he 
never will have. All I want to know is, 
what thou wouldst say if he should ask thee 
to become his wife?" 

" But, uncle, I have repeated more than 
three hundred Ave Marias for him, and he 
does not begin to relent." 

" That is not to the purpose, my daughter. 
He may be proof against thy prayers, and 
yet be unable to resist thyself. If thou canst 
save him and the others too, wilt thou do it? 
that is the question." 

"They are gallant lads, dear uncle, and 
well worth saving." 



FOR THE TRUTH. 135 

" I see how it is. Well, to-morrow I will 
examine into their progress." 

The next day the cure went to the prison, 
and Louise rather reluctantly accompanied 
him, remaining, however, by his permission, 
in the keeper's room. 

The cure greeted the captives kindly, 
handing Louis a beautiful bouquet. 

" That is from my poor Louise, whose 
heart is set on thy coming back to the 
Church." 

"Give her my thanks for her great kind- 
ness." 

" And what else shall I say?" 

" Say that I shall never forget to pray for 
her." 

"Dost think her a comely lass?" 

" Indeed I do, and, what is better, she has 
a tender heart." 

"That she has, and a pretty fortune to 
boot. And I will tell you what it is, young 
man: if you will only abjure your heresy, I 
will give her to you for your wife, dowry 
and all." 



136 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

A flush of surprise passed over Louis' face, 
and for a moment he could not speak. 

" I mean what I say ; so take time to re- 
cover." 

"But mademoiselle?" 

" Have no fear. She will not shrink from 
anything that will effect your conversion." 

" But I could not accept such a sacrifice." 

" Tush, tush ! Is that the way a young man 
talks when a pretty girl is willing to marry 
him?" 

" That is not all I would say." 

" Let Louise come here," motioning to the 
officer. 

He withdrew, presently returning with the 
maiden, who entered with an air of great 
timidity. 

" Can you find it in your heart to grieve 
this damsel?" 

Rapidly did Louis picture the two futures 
spread out before him. On the one hand, 
freedom, wealth, position, and, dearer than 
all, this beautiful, loving maiden for his 
bride; on the other a convict's fate — igno- 



FOR THE TEUTH. 137 

miny, suffering, death, or a galley slave for 
life. 

And he was only eighteen. Can you blame 
him that he wavered ? Yet it was but for a 
moment. 

" I thank her with all my heart, but I 
should not be worthy of her if I should re- 
nounce my faith." 

Louise looked at him with a mute appeal 
not easy to resist, but he only added : 

" Believe me, mademoiselle, it is not that I 
slight you, but that I cannot deny my Master." 

Her uncle would have expostulated, but 
she prevented him, and offering her hand : 

" I would have saved you if I could — fare- 
well." 

Unobserved by the cure, he took a little 
volume from his bosom, and, giving it to 
her, said in a low voice : 

" Read it carefully for ray sake. And I 
pray God it may lead you into the truth." 

"He is an ingrate," growled the uncle as 
he strode rapidly home, his niece being 
scarcely able to keep pace with him. 
12* 



138 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

" Don't, dear uncle. He only does what 
he thinks right. We will say prayers for 
him." 

" He shall have no prayers of mine — the 
child of Satan ! To think of his flinging 
back such a gift in my face! I shall de- 
nounce him forthwith." 

Louise made no reply till they entered the 
house, when she set upon him with a flood of 
entreaties to persuade him to connive at the 
escape of the boys. At length he promised 
to think it over, and not to decide till the 
next morning. 

His niece retired to her room, but not to 
her pillow. Taking the little book out of 
her pocket, she read on its title-page, " The 
New Testament." 

" It must be a part of the Bible/' she said 
to herself, " for I have heard my uncle speak 
of the Old and New Testaments. I suppose 
he would burn it if I told him. But it can 
do no harm if I hide it under my pillow. 
Poor Louis ! for his sake I will keep it." 

Then, kneeling before a crucifix, she be- 



FOR THE TRUTH. 139 

sought the holy Mother to have pity on these 
poor heretics, and to save them from the 
dreadful fate that threatened them. Toward 
morning, wearied out, she threw herself on a 
couch, and falling into a heavy sleep, did not 
awake till daylight was streaming into the 
room and the convent-bells were ringing for 
matins. She hastened down stairs, but the 
cure* had eaten his breakfast and gone out. 
She was oppressed with dread, and well she 
might be, for in that system in which she 
trusted there were no bowels of mercies. 
Persecution was a high duty, a great mission 
of the Church. Heretofore she had believed 
in this duty, though not without a struggle. 
She was distressed at the doubts which now 
began to creep over her. So there she sat, 
looking out of the window with a foreboding 
heart, which proved only too true a prophet. 
Her uncle had hastened to the authorities to 
denounce the three boys as hardened repro- 
bates, under the dominion of the devil. 

The day of trial was not long deferred. 
The youthful prisoners appeared in court, 



140 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

and being found guilty of the charges brought 
against them, received sentence of condemna- 
tion. But before this sentence could be exe- 
cuted, it was necessary that it should be con- 
firmed by the Parliament of Tournay. So 
the prisoners were bound together with cords 
and marched thither. Here they were com- 
mitted to a dungeon, their trial being de- 
ferred that their conversion might once more 
be attempted. The arguments employed, 
however, were somewhat anomalous — the logic 
of pain, the spiritual efforts of this cur6, in 
marked contrast with the persuasions of love 
in the last experiment, consisting in inquiries, 
from time to time, whether they were not 
weary of suffering. 

If they were not, it certainly was no fault 
of their jailers. Rotten straw, filled with 
vermin, was the couch on which they lay 
starving for days and weeks, the scantiest al- 
lowance of miserable bread being thrown to 
them through the grating. Here the poor 
boys wasted away without the touch of any 
loving hand — without a syllable of cheer 



FOR THE TRUTH. 141 

from any human being. Yet they had but 
to utter one word of abjuration and their 
prison-doors would fly open. 

Wonderful was the faith that preserved 
them from uttering that word — that gave 
them such lofty heroism when so near starva- 
tion ! 

But temptation was to come to them in 
still another form. Two additional prisoners 
were one day shut into their dungeon, w T hom 
they were surprised to recognize as old school- 
mates, who had been arrested, like themselves, 
for the crime of worshipping God according 
to the dictates of their conscience. The faith 
of these comrades, however, was not proof 
against the trials into which it had brought 
them. They could sacrifice much for their re- 
ligion, but not everything. In their case the 
blessed seed had fallen upon stony ground ; 
and though it had sprung up, yet for want 
of root it could not resist the burning heat 
of persecution. 

The Mirecourt boys saw their vacillation, 
and earnestly implored them to remain stead- 



142 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

fast. It was in vain. They wept over their 
own weakness, but they yielded and lost the 
martyr's crown. 

At length came the rescript from the min- 
ister of state, conveying the king's decree. 
The parliament was convoked. The youthful 
prisoners, pale and emaciated almost to 
skeletons, were brought forth from their 
miserable dungeon and placed in the dock. 
Then the judge put on his black cap and 
read their sentence : 

" You, Louis Montrevel, and Andrew and 
Henry Oster, convicted of being Huguenots, 
and of having attempted to leave the king- 
dom for the purpose of securing freedom in 
your detestable heresy, by the order of our 
most gracious majesty, Louis XIV., I do 
hereby condemn to the galleys for the re- 
mainder of your natural life." 

What a blow to fall on those young heads ! 
Brave as they were, and hard as they had 
struggled to prepare themselves for the worst, 
their hearts quailed with dread, while drops 
of agony stood on their pallid faces. 



FOR THE TRUTH. 143 

Observing their emotion, the judge gave 
them one more opportunity to retrieve their 
fate. Bat they instantly repelled the propo- 
sition ; they could not deny their Lord. 

So the obstinate heretics were removed to 
another city, where the gang was to be 
formed. And here they were cast into a 
filthy hole, where no ray of light ever pene- 
trated, and where were crowded more than 
thirty miserable ruffians, convicted of every 
sort of wickedness and crime. 

Dreadful companionship was this for the 
pure-minded boys ! Assailed on every hand 
with jeers and taunts and gibes, while their 
ears were filled with obscene ribaldry and 
jests and horrid profanity, they could only 
lift up their hearts in silent prayer to Him 
who was made perfect through suffering. 

At length the gang was completed, and 
being chained two and two, they were 
marched together to Dunkirk. Language 
cannot describe the sufferings of this route. 
We have all shuddered at the appalling ac- 
counts of u the middle passage" on board the 



144 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

African slavers. But this passage could not 
have exceeded, in horrors, the fearful march 
of the galley-slaves to their destination. Here 
were congregated the basest, most profligate 
characters — a company of hardened convicts, 
"topfull of direst cruelty" — brutal, blas- 
phemous, fiend-like. Shrieks, groans and 
dreadful imprecations were freely intermin- 
gled with the frequent crack of the blood- 
bringing lash. 

What must this scene have been to those 
virtuous and high-minded boys? To add the 
last drop to their full cup, they were from 
this time separated from one another. Poor 
Louis was chained to the very vilest of that 
vile set — a scoffing miscreant who had been 
guilty of every species of crime, and who, 
having twice escaped from the galleys and 
been retaken, was now on his way there once 
more. As may be conceived, he was in a 
man-hating and God-defying mood. 

To be thus bound to a mass of loathsome 
moral corruption, a body of living death, 
while his blood was chilled with the foul Ian- 



FOR THE TRUTH. 145 

guage, and awful blasphemies and curses 
poured continually into his ear, was indeed a 
trial under which the boy's spirit quailed and 
wellnigh sank. Then he cried unto God : 

" Deliver me out of the mire, and let me 
not sink : let me be delivered from them that 
hate me, and out of the deep waters. 

" Let not the water-flood overflow me, 
neither let the deep swallow me up, and let 
not the pit shut her mouth upon me. 

" Hide not thy face from thy servant ; for 
I am in trouble : hear me speedily." 

And the Lord heard his supplications and 
strengthened him out of Zion. There came 
to his mind consoling promises : 

" Commit thy way unto the Lord ; trust 
also in him, and he shall bring it to pass." 

" To him that overcometh will I give to 
eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst 
of the paradise of God." 

Louis thought of his Saviour's patience 
under the indignities heaped upon him, of 
his prayers for his persecutors, of his infinite 
pity for sinners. And there was kindled in 

13 



146 MART YES AND SUFFERERS 

his heart a tender compassion and an intense 
yearning for the salvation of this wretched 
being with whom he was so closely inter- 
linked. This enabled him to bear all his 
abuse with a divine meekness which at first 
only exasperated the wretch to greater vio- 
lence. 

Thus with aching limbs and bleeding feet 
did this miserable gang march side by side 
on their dreary road, being cruelly beaten 
whenever from weariness their steps faltered. 
Miserably fed by day, at night they were 
lodged in some dismal outhouse, where — 
worse off than the beasts — they had not even 
straw on which to lie down, while their inhu- 
man driver seemed ever on the alert to invent 
new modes of discomfort and torture. 

Under all these trials and provocations, 
such a wonderful patience and meekness did 
Louis exhibit, and so kind and gentle was his 
treatment of his fellow-convict, that at length, 
as the constant trickling of water will wear 
away even the granite, so that obdurate nature, 
seemingly harder than rock, began to soften. 



FOR THE TRUTH. 147 

" I tell you what it is," he broke out one 
day : " I can stand out against 'most any- 
body or anything, but" (with a dreadful 
oath) " I can't, somehow, seem to stand 
against such an innocent lamb as you. I've 
been thinking over those days, so long ago, 
when my mother used to teach me my prayers 
to the Virgin. Many's the time she's led me to 
the grand cathedral, and taught me to sign 
the cross on my forehead with holy water, 
the more's the pity. For when I found out 

what d d fellows the priests were, with 

all their flummeries and falsehoods, and 
making money by cart-loads out of people's 
sins, then I gave up attending mass; and 
finally I broke away from everything good, 
till I came to believe that God was nothing 
but a bugbear to scare children with. So 
now here I am, at the bottom of everything." 

There was a touch of feeling in the man's 
voice, which made Louis' heart beat quicker. 
And as they travelled on he told him the 
wonderful story of the Man of Sorrows, and 
of the dark depths into which he descended 



148 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

for the redemption of man. He told him of 
his holy life, his mingling with the vilest, his 
patience under provocation, his agony in the 
garden, and death upon the cross, with his 
betrayal by one disciple, and his cruel deser- 
tion by the others. Nor did he forget his 
pardon of the dying thief. 

As Duress listened his heart melted within 
him, while a tear or two slowly rolled down 
his cheeks. 

" Oh, why could I not have heard all this 
before ?" he exclaimed in a broken voice. 

And so the long days passed away, the 
hoary sinner drinking in blessed teachings 
from the lips of the earnest boy. 

Louis had become so reduced from his 
long sufferings, with a scarcity of food, that 
his little remaining strength was rapidly 
failing. 

" I don't believe I shall be able to go on in 
the morning," he said to Duress one night, 
when they had stopped for lodging in a 
crumbling barn ; " and they will have to 
leave me here to die of starvation." 



FOR THE TRUTH. 149 

" We don't do that, my lamb. Here is my 
last ration, which I don't want." 

Louis protested, but was finally persuaded 
to swallow it ; and dry and hard as was the 
morsel, it somewhat revived him. 

"Now, if you can lay your head on me 
you may, perhaps, catch a nap or two. I 
know I'm not fit company for such a lamb, 
and I'm not over clean, but I shall make a 
better pillow than the floor." 

Touched by his kindness, Louis complied 
and soon fell into a sound slumber. But 
when in the morning came the summons to 
march, he was unable to stand. 

" You will have to leave me, Duress." 

" I'll stay and starve with you first. But 
you keep still and I'll fix it." 

When the driver of the gang came along, 
Duress made a sign that he had something to 
communicate. 

" What's the row ?" asked the man as he 
approached. 

" Look' a-here ; that's one of the Huguenot 
cubs, and he's going to give us the dodge. 

13* 



150 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

Now if you want to get him to the galleys, 
I'll just take him there in spite of himself. 
So give us the word, and I'll grab him fast," 
with a sprinkling of oaths all along. 

" Serve 'm right — the hated cub! Yes, 
grab him and welcome, only your chain must 
have a longer pull." 

When this was done, Duress, roughly catch- 
ing up the boy : " Now open your mouth if 
you dare." 

The driver and his subalterns, who had 
gathered round, broke into a hoarse laugh, 
and with the crack of the whip and a volley 
of imprecations the marching recommenced. 

" I had to sham, or the wretch would have 
left you there to die. And I had to swear 
too, or I couldn't have deceived him, though 
I knew 'twould hurt your feelings. But 
you'll overlook it." 

u It is the Master, Duress, whom it offends, 
and you must ask forgiveness of him." 

" Well, I'll try my best to break it off, 
though it comes as natural as my breath. I 
dunno as I'm doing you any kindness to take 




To the Galleys. 



Page 151. 



152 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

On each side were twenty-five benches, to 
every one of which was attached a long, 
heavy oar, which was pulled by six convicts 
chained by the leg to a bench. There were 
thus three hundred of these rowers to each 
galley. About fifty free marines worked the 
sails and managed the vessel. And in addi- 
tion were a hundred soldiers, with a number 
of officers for general command and for the 
custody of the slaves. 

The galley had at her bow five guns rang- 
ing from eighteen to thirty-six pounders. Her 
mode of attack was to bear down heavily with 
her oars, so as to drive her prow into the 
enemy's stern, and then, firing her guns, to 
board him with her soldiers and marines. A 
part of the guns were always kept charged 
and pointed at the convicts, in order to pre- 
vent their taking part with the enemy, and 
to suppress mutiny. But as mowing down 
the rowers would leave the vessel powerless, 
these galleys were mainly used for coasting and 
for cutting off stragglers, though occasionally 
they were employed for conveying official per- 



FOR THE TRUTH. 153 

sons to a distant port. Their principal use, 
however, was as a penal infliction for those 
convicted of capital crimes, such as murder, 
burglary and Protestantism. 

The overseer, or slave-driver, was called Le 
Comite, and the two inferiors under him, Les 
Sous Comites. Their badge of office was the 
cowhide, to the lavish use of which they 
were urged by the superior officers when a 
greater rate of speed was desired. On the 
naked backs of these poor fellows, labouring 
at the oar and stripped from the waist 
upward, thick and fast would fall the dread- 
ful blows, bringing away strips of skin, and 
followed by the shrieks of the victims, as the 
blood flowed from their lacerated flesh. 

So far as the hated Huguenots were con- 
cerned, all this was neither more nor less 
than the long iron arms of the Inquisition 
reaching out to crush them, although under 
the disguise of civil law. Such degrading 
bondage ! such incessant toil ! such cruel task- 
masters !— separated from all refining as well 
as religious influences, and subjected to the 



154 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

vilest companionship, the most loathsome 
associations! — what wonder, if under this con- 
stant wear of bod}' and soul, the faith of some 
should at length give away ? 

Nurtured by a tender mother in the bosom 
of a refined and affectionate family, Louis was 
ill prepared for the dreadful scenes to which 
he was now introduced. As the future 
spread out gloomily before him, no w r onder 
that hot tears flowed from his eyes. 

" Cheer up, messmate !" said a voice behind 
him, and turning his head he saw Duress, 
from whom he had temporarily been separated, 
but w T ho was now chained to the same bench. 

"You'll hardly thank me for bringing you 
here, my lamb. But since here you are, I 
hope I shall find some chance of easing your 
dreadful burden, if ever so little." 

" Thank you, Duress, but I cannot endure 
looking forward to years spent in this dread- 
ful place." 

" I don't believe it'll be many years, for 
though you've got a tough spirit, your weak 
body can never long stand this hard work. 



FOE THE TEUTH. 155 

But have you seen that poor old fellow on 
the bench before us ? — no, not the one you 
are looking at, but that other with white hair, 
and just such a patient look as you Huguenots 
all wear. I'll be bound he's one of you." 

Louis fixed his eyes in the direction pointed 
out. and having gazed intently a few minutes, 
exclaimed in a low voice : 

" AYhy, that is Father Legarme. My God !" 
lifting his eyes to heaven, " have mercy on 
the holy man !" 

It was not long before he had a chance to 
make himself known to his good pastor, who 
soon told him his sad story. It seems that 
after being arrested, convicted of heresy and 
condemned to death, his sentence was com- 
muted. So here lie was in chains as a galley- 
slave. 

It was one of the saddest things in Louis' 
sad life to see this venerable patriarch tug- 
ging at the oars by day, and at night cower- 
ing for sleep under his rude bench. He 
felt as if he would gladly have performed 
his tasks and borne his stripes. Alas! it 



156 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

was almost more than he could do to endure 
his own. 

Apart from the liability to those occasional 
extra labours which involved indescribable 
suffering, the ordinary condition of these un- 
happy beings was painful in the extreme. 
Constantly chained to the bench at which 
they sat by day, and under which they slept 
by night, exposed to all the vicissitudes of 
the elements, covered with vermin, scantily 
clothed, miserably fed, and degraded almost 
below the brutes by the treatment they re- 
ceived, they were compelled by sheer force of 
the whip to render an amount of work at the 
oar which under no other system could have 
been extracted from the human muscles. 

Such were the toils and such the sufferings 
in which Father Legarme, Louis Montrevel 
and Duress were now intimately associated, 
the two latter being chained to the same 
bench. The consoling passages from the 
Divine Word which the boy repeated to his 
companion in their chance moments of inter- 
course fell upon his thirsty spirit with a 



FOR THE TRUTH. 157 

quickening and comforting power, while the 
occasional counsels of the aged pastor were 
eagerly treasured up. And a blessed comfort 
it was to the two older Christians to see Christ 
formed more and more distinctly in the life 
of the late hardened reprobate. 

Day after day — month after month — year 
after year — no outward change in the life 
of these worn, oppressed, yet trusting con- 
victs ! But He who looks upon the hearts 
saw that they, each and all, were fast ripening 
for heaven. 

It w T as wonderful that Father Legarme's 
strength had held out so many years. Of 
late, however, Louis and Duress had noticed 
a failure in his powers of endurance. 

It was one of those days of oppressive heat 
in the month of August when, ordinarily, 
labour was made light as possible. But as 
the officers desired to reach a certain port 
with the utmost despatch, commands were 
given for a twelve hours' pull without a mo- 
ment's intermission. In order to accomplish 
this the comites, from time to time, would 

14 



158 MABTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

put into the mouths of the rowers pieces of 
bread dipped in wine, which they did while 
they were pulling, so as to prevent the neces- 
sity of their dropping the oar. 

The crack of the whip, the shrieks and 
yells of the bleeding victims, the awful oaths 
of the comites and the shouts of the officers 
urging them on — what a scene of horrors was 
there presented ! And how did Louis' heart 
ache for Father Legarme toiling thus in the 
burning sun ! 

" The old father won't last over for another 
such day as this," said Duress in a low voice 
to Louis, to which he could only answer by a 
deep sigh. 

It was toward the very last of the passage 
that the good pastor's strength finally gave way, 
and he was obliged to slacken his efforts. 
The comite, provoked beyond measure to 
lose his services at such a juncture, rained on 
him blows like hail, till the old man dropped 
in a swoon. There he lay without conscious- 
ness or motion till they reached their port. 
Then the whistle was sounded, and a dose of 



FOR THE TRUTH. 159 

opium being administered all round to ensure 
sound slumber as a preparation for the toils 
of the coming day, the tired oarsmen dropped 
under their benches. 

The moment their comites were out of the 
way, both Louis and Duress, exhausted as 
they were, sprang forward to see if any life 
might be lingering in that poor wreck of 
a body. When they found that he still 
breathed, they almost regretted that all was 
not over. 

" Poor old fellow !" said Duress, sorrow- 
fully ; " I thought he'd have got inside the 
bright gates this time surely, but here he is 
still, the morels the pity. Since he's alive, 
though, I'm bound to take care of him. But 
you must go straight back, my lamb, for the 
comites, one or the other of them, may pass 
along here any minute. And if they should 
nab you, 'twould be a hard case." 

" But I must stay and help you." 

" 'Twont do, messmate. Don't you remem- 
ber the threat they made the last time you 
helped him out of a swoon? Besides, you 



160 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

could do nothing for him which I can't do, 
for Fm an old hand in these cases." 

" But you are in as much danger as I." 

"You let me alone, my lamb, and give 
heed to my words. You can see and hear 
everything from your bench, and will be 
within call if I want you, while now you're 
only in the way. So, if you don't want to 
distress me, march /" 

All this time both of them had been chaf- 
ing the old man's limbs, but thus entreated, 
Louis tenderly laid down his hand and with- 
drew. When Father Legarme's pulses grew 
a little stronger, Duress tore pieces from his 
shirt, and dipping them in water laid them 
gently on his inflamed wounds, after which 
he fed him from his own scanty allowance. 

" It is of little use, my son," said the good 
father, trying to smile, "to patch up this 
poor tenement, which is fast falling to pieces. 
I am sorry not to bear my dying testimony 
to my Master's faithfulness before all these 
poor creatures, but he knows I have the 
will. Do all you can for my beloved Louis, 



FOR THE TRUTH. 161 

and tell him that God will never suffer him 
to be tempted above what he is able." 

"That I will, but he himself is listening 
to every word you say." 

At this point Louis came forward, and 
pressing his lips to the trembling hand of his 
beloved friend, said, as distinctly as his sobs 
would allow : 

" Pray for me once more, my father !" 

The dying man, having offered up a few 
broken but fervent petitions, then gave them 
his parting .blessing, when Duress insisted on 
Louis' leaving them. Thus driven away, he 
stole back to his station, and leaning against 
the bench, looked gloomily around him. 

It was a sad picture that met his eye. 
Under the galley-benches were huddled, 
one over another, the exhausted convicts, 
buried in the deathlike slumber of opium. 
Many of them had dropped down in their 
weariness, without stopping to put on any 
covering. And there in the bright moonlight 
he could distinctly see their backs gashed and 
bleeding from the merciless cowhide, while 

14* 



162 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

the mild queen of heaven looked down pity- 
ingly on this spectacle of woe. 

" Is this persecution to continue for ever ?" 
he said to himself. 

It was indeed a dreary future that stretched 
away before him. He had often felt that 
martyrdom would be a blessed exchange for 
his present existence. In a fearful crisis, such 
as occurred under the pressure of inquisitorial 
tortures or in confronting a violent death, the 
excitement sometimes occasioned a rallying of 
all the vital forces of body and mind, which 
sustained and elevated the soul to a pitch of 
heavenly rapture. 

But these days of degrading, bitter, hope- 
less servitude — slowly revolving, one after 
another, in what seemed an interminable 
cycle ; these days of sickening toil and abuse, 
in which the spirit was fettered with chains 
dragging it in the dust ; days when the 
physical frame became too weary and worn 
for the utterance of prayer, while no blessed 
Sabbath rest ever came to strengthen and 
refresh ; — oh it was this lingering martyrdom 



FOR THE TRUTH. 163 

of the soul, wearing away, little by little, all 
its vital forces, it was this which Louis felt 
he had not courage longer to endure. 

" Will the Lord cast off for ever?" he cried 
out in his agony, " and will he be favorable 
no more ?" 

" Is his mercy clean gone for ever ? doth his 
promise fail for evermore ?" 

" Hath God forgotten to be gracious ? hath 
he in anger shut up his tender mercies?" 

Then stole in upon him terrible question- 
ings, such as the tempter well understands 
how to suggest : 

" Who knows that there is a God ? If 
there was, and he was benevolent as had been 
represented, would he turn a deaf ear to the 
pleadings of his children ? Would he suffer 
his chosen ones to be hunted from place to 
place like wild beasts, and to become the 
very offscouring of the earth ?" 

Thoughts of the tender-hearted Louise also 
came to him, and of her earnest efforts to 
save hinx from this dreadful doom. 

" And have I sacrificed all my earthly pros- 



164 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

pects for a mere fable ?" he exclaimed in 
bitterness. 

These doubts and questionings ran riot in 
his bewildered mind, ploughing deep fur- 
rows in the very centre of his being. In the 
midst of this conflict, while great drops of 
anguish stood on his forehead, and such rend- 
ing sobs broke forth as no bodily torture had 
been able to force from him, he suddenly 
catches the clear tones of Father Legarme : 

" Thanks be to God, which giveth us the 
victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ !" 

These words of the dying martyr broke the 
tempter's hold. As at the approach of sun- 
light the moles and bats and all the monsters 
of darkness flee to their hiding-places, so, at 
this single glimpse of the Sun of Righteousness 
did all his evil thoughts melt and vanish away. 
What a change had passed over everything ! 
As he thought of his dismantled home, of his 
noble father and mother, his brothers and 
little sisters, and of the scattered flock into 
which the hungry wolves had fastened their 
bloody fangs, this passage was recalled to him : 



FOR THE TRUTH. 165 

" These are they which came out of great 
tribulation, and have washed their robes and 
made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 

" They shall hunger no more, neither 
thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light 
on them, nor any heat. 

" For the Lamb which is in the midst of 
the throne shall feed them, and shall lead 
them unto living fountains of waters; and 
God shall wipe away all tears from their 
eyes." 

Then he thought of his tried friend, Duress, 
whom he had led to Christ, who for years 
had borne faithful witness to the truth, and 
who at this moment stood unflinchingly at 
the post of danger. Was it not worth all his 
sufferings to bring to Christ one such soul ? 

As he looked round once more on that 
pitiable sight which had lately harrowed his 
soul to madness — the sight of wretched con- 
victs, whose degrading bondage and fearful 
sufferings were uncheered by any light from 
the great future — there came a voice from the 
infinite heights : 



166 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

" What I do thou knowest not now, but 
thou shalt know hereafter. Trust to infinite 
love, and one day all these discords shall be 
harmonized." 

" I can, I do trust/' he responded, while 
every heart-beat uttered, 

" Thy will, O God, not mine, be done !" 

An ineffable calm stole over him, while the 
bitter sorrows of the past and of that future 
which had seemed interminable, to his now 
cleared vision appeared only a light affliction, 
which is but for a moment, working out a 
far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory. 

The long night had dragged through its 
appointed hours. The rising sun was just 
tinging the waters with a faint glow. It 
looked down upon Louis Montrevel leaning 
quietly against his bench, his pale face illu- 
mined with celestial light— a face which at 
that moment no one would have taken for 
that of a galley-slave. 

It looked also upon the dying martyr and 
upon his homely, faithful nurse. As Duress 



FOR THE TRUTH. 167 

bent over to moisten his parched mouth, those 
white lips faltered out : 

" Sing to me." 

And the rough convict in a low voice sang 
one of the sweet Huguenot hymns he had 
learned of Louis. 

Just then the comite passed along. But 
Duress did not pause in his song. 

"What are you here for? Stop your 
infernal noise and back to your bench." 

" Don't you see the good man's dying ? So 
I must stay here and try to ease his passage 
over Jordan." 

" Over to purgatory, you mean/' replied the 
comite savagely ; adding, with a dreadful oath, 
" We'll soon send you after him." 

At the sound of that discordant voice, with 
a startled look Father Legarme opened his 
eyes. 

" He's away now," whispered Duress 
tenderly, " and your soul can depart in peace." 

The old man looked upward, exclaiming : 

" Glorious Saviour ! Come, Lord, come 
quickly !" 



168 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS 

One moment more and he had passed into 
the celestial city. Duress folded those wasted 
hands, and then wiping his eyes with the 
back of his bronzed hand, returned to his 
post, saying to Louis : 

" The Lord take care of thee, my lamb, for 
I shall soon follow the good father." 

An hour had passed. The whistle had 
roused all hands, and the body of the martyr 
had been flung into the sea. 

" The bastinado for Duress !" shouted the 
comite. 

A shudder ran round the deck, while Louis 
closed his eyes in earnest supplication. 

Being led forth, the convict was stretched 
prostrate over a plank, while two stout galley- 
slaves held his arms pinioned and two more 
his legs. Then a gigantic Turk approached, 
and with his utmost vigour applied the cow- 
hide, with every lash bringing away a long 
strip of skin. Not a groan escaped the sufferer, 
but after a few blows he broke out in 
prayer : 

" O Lord ! give me strength to suffer for 



FOR THE TRUTH. 169 

thee. Forgive my poor comrades ; forgive all 
my sins and take me to thyself!" 

"We'll soon stop his whining," said the 
cornite, furiously urging on the Turk to 
greater force. 

" Forgive my enemies ! forgive the comite 
for his cruelty, and teach him thy blessed 
Gospel !" 

" The blessed cowhide shall teach you to 
shut your mouth." 

With the twelfth stroke, Duress lost the 
powder of speech, but still the comite urged 
on the Turk : 

" Faster ! harder ! Let him smart !" 

The savage executioner continued till the 
sweat rolled down his face, w 7 hen he dropped 
the lash, exclaiming: 

"I am worn out: I cannot fetch another 
stroke." 

Then the comite seized the dreadful instru- 
ment, and dealt stroke after stroke till he too 
was exhausted, when he flung down his whip, 
saying coolly : 

" I think likely we've done for him now, 

15 



170 MARTYRS AND SUFFERERS. 

though he had as many lives as a cat. Tarn 
him over, there." 

He spoke the truth. The bloody instru- 
ment had opened for another saint the gates 
of paradise. The once hardened reprobate 
bad gone to receive the martyr's crown. 

"And I saw under the altar the souls of 
them that were slain for the Word of God, 
and for the testimony which they held : 

"And they cried with a loud voice, saying, 
How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou 
not judge and avenge our blood on them that 
dwell on the earth ?" 

" Revered pastor ! beloved Duress !" ex- 
claimed Louis with clasped hands : " your 
conflict is ended, your victory won ! help me 
to endure till my turn comes !" 

The mangled form found a kind shelter in 
the blue waters, and Louis Montrevel, w T ith 
the peace of God in his soul, took up his cross 
anew and went on his way. 



APPENDIX. 



The following books on persecution and martyr- 
dom may, as they have time and opportunity, be read 
by the young : 

1. The Golden Kule. 

2. Hadassah. 

3. Martyr's Daughter. 

4. Good for Evil. 

5. The Martyred Missionaries. 

6. The Bohemian Martyrs. 

7. Witnesses for Christ. 

8. Leila Ada, the Converted Jewess, 

9. The Waldenses, illustrated. 

10. Madagascar Martyrs. 

11. Traditions of the Covenanters. 

12. Huguenot Galley Slaves. 

13. Annals of Persecution. 

14. English Martyrology. 

15. History of the Inquisition, 

16. French Protestants, 

171 



172 APPENDIX. 

All these books are issued by the Presbyterian 
Board of Publication, and may be read with profit 
by youth. They illustrate the power of sustaining 
grace ; they show what God can enable old and 
young to do. As the mind of the reader shall 
mature, let him read such books as these : 

1. The Cloud of Witnesses. 

2. Milner's Church History. 

3. Schaff's Church History. 

4. Josephus. 

5. Quick's Synodicon. 

6. Fox's Book of Martyrs. 

It is a kind wish, May you never be persecuted ; it 
is a kinder, May you never be a persecutor. 



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